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enA Tour of The Sceptichttp://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/sceptic/tour.html
<div class="field field-name-field-published field-type-date field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="collex:date" datatype="gYearMonth"><span class="date-display-single" property="collex:date" datatype="gYearMonth" content="2004-01-01T00:00:00-05:00">January 2004</span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded">
<h2 align="left"><strong><span class="title1">A Tour of <em>The Sceptic</em></span></strong></h2>
<h3>Nanora Sweet</h3>
<b>The guided tour, written especially for this edition by Nanora Sweet, describes the poem's form and takes the reader step by step through its contents.</b>
<ol>
<li><em>The Sceptic</em> is a long non-narrative poem and a summary or guided tour may be in order. The poem takes place in a skyey geosphere featuring differences of light and dark, height and depth, heaven and earth, water and land. Its first thirteen verse paragraphs (ll. 1-44) explore this setting from the standpoint of the human spirit who seeks light in heaven or (if a sceptic) on earth, who seeks a footing on rock or (again if a sceptic) in quicksand. Flight imagery dominates ; the soul is an eagle, but the sceptic is prepared to clip the wings of the cherub "Hope" and remain earth-bound. An epicurean, he clings to earthly pleasures and ignores disruptions and deprivations to come (by storm, by drought). In sections or paragraphs 14-18 (ll. 145-88), the poem's setting offers a series of choices to the earthbound sceptic : earth or water? Calm or storm? Pestilential swamp or desert storm (this last a double confounding of land and wave)? If the sceptic were to recover his faith, his setting and circumstances would be quite different: an everliving font that flows to the furthest isles, an Atoner (Christ) who deflects the Avenger (God).<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>The poem's middle sections feature the sceptic's predicaments and career. In Sections 19-25 (ll. 189-268), its world of water, rock and air is populated by the cautionary figures of proto-sceptics, sceptics and their interpreters. Two versions of the proto-sceptic appear, a Platonic ephebe and a Byronic 'Prisoner of Chillon', each blinded by the light of truth or of freedom. The full-blown sceptic also appears in two forms as Promethean prisoner and fallen Satan. These more profoundly benighted figures are bound in cycles and even downward spirals of punishment and retribution. The sceptic may assume the mantle of historian or poet but cannot do so redemptively without the leverage of 'Eternity' (l.268).<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>In sections 26 through 31 (ll. 269-368), the sceptic as failed Byronic poet is given a "progress" from fame to ignominy and even oblivion. Unarmed against "the Avenger," unsupported by his audience, he is exposed to "Death" (ll. 292, 334). Sections 32-37 (ll. 369-456) remind the sceptic that like any human being he will "shrink to die" (l. 394)&#8212;and we know that Byron's Manfred (with the support of an audience) is as surprised as relieved to learn that ''tis not so difficult to die" (<em>Manfred</em> 3.4.151). In her own depiction of death, Hemans recurs to winged-flight imagery. The soul is cast into the dark "half unfurl'd" (ll. 402, 424). How might this dark encounter&#8212;between death and a faith that demands its Messiah's death&#8212;yield the light of heaven?<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>Hemans finesses her dark-on-dark dilemma in her closing sections 38-43 (ll. 457-550) by swerving first to one alternative and then to another. The first alternative is that death wins and faith is not worthy of the name; that is, we "wither" in the "desolating blast" of "God," "the Chastener" (ll. 460-2). At once, this fiery solution is replaced by a second alternative involving the "bright" spirit of the late-lamented Princess Charlotte, the queen/mother who-might-have-been. With the Princess as a sublime figure and strong supplement, Britain becomes the "chosen isle" shining with watch-fires to the sea (ll. 510-11) and hearth-fires to the land. In this way the poem reclaims its setting for a <em>light</em> that eluded a sceptic and a <em>fire</em> that has daunted everyone in the hands of a vengeful god. Both light and fire are now in the keeping of a female figure whose two facets accommodate light and fire, a mother-guide who will "[t]each&#8230;the immortal lays" (l. 541) and a prophetess whose "tones" are "to Judah's harp convey'd" (l. 544).<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>Formally, the 550 lines of <em>The Sceptic</em> divide into 43 verse paragraphs varying from 6 to 38 lines in length. Prosodically the poem's iambic pentametre couplets end in commas as often as full stops and on rare occasions run ahead with no punctuation whatever. Hemans's running distichs differ markedly from the heroic couplets that she and Byron used in early poems on topical subjects, her 1808 <em>England and Spain</em> and 1812 "The Domestic Affections" and his 1809 <em>English Bards and Scotch Reviewers</em>. <em>The Sceptic's</em> enjambed couplets manage the swelling cadences characteristic of Romantic blank verse, but they also support the poem's claims to epic action and "public performance"<a href="#1">[1]</a>. Textually, the poem carries an epigraph from the seventeenth-century French religious apologist Bossuet and ends with six notes from St Augustine and the Biblical books of Ezekiel, Isaiah, Kings 1 and Jeremiah.</li>
</ol>
<h4>Notes</h4>
<p class="note">
<a name="1"> </a><b>1</b>. I take this phrase from Susan Wolfson's nuanced reading of Byron's (very different) couplets in <i>The Corsair</i>: see her Formal <em>Charges: The Shaping of Poetry in British Romanticism</em> (Stanford University Press, 1997), p.143. Wolfson also calls attention to William Bowman Piper's <em>The Heroic Couplet</em> (Cleveland: Press of Case Western University, 1969) which critiques the running couplet of Hemans's contemporaries (e.g., Moore and Hunt) as a "degraded romance couplet" (pp.4, 49, qtd in Wolfosn, <em>Formal Charges</em>, p.275, n5.)</p>
</div></div></div><section class="field field-name-field-parent-section field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Section:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/node/31535">Electronic Editions</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-resource-index field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Resource:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/editions/sceptic/index.html">The Sceptic; A Poem: A Hemans-Byron Dialogue</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-authored-by-secondary- field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Authored by (Secondary):&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/person/sweet-nanora">Sweet, Nanora</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/percy-bysshe-shelley-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Percy Bysshe Shelley</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/hume" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Hume</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1531" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Peterloo Massacre</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1759" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">skepticism</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/gibbon" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Gibbon</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/2736" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Quarterly Review</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4706" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Sceptic</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4707" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Manfred</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4708" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Childe Harold&#039;s Pilgrimage</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4709" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">woman poet</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/murray" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Murray</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4711" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">sceptic</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4712" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">skeptic</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4713" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">sceptical</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/title/common-sense" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Common Sense</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4715" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Forest Sanctuary</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4716" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Domestic Affections</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4717" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">poetic femininity</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4718" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">bluestocking</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4719" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">heterodoxy</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4720" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">epideictic</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4721" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">didactic</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/jeffrey-walker" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jeffrey Walker</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/bossuet" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Bossuet</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4724" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">1819</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4725" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">life after death</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-52 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Section:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/section/editions/the-sceptic-a-hemans-byron-dialogue" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Sceptic: A Hemans-Byron Dialogue</a></li></ul></section>Thu, 23 Feb 2012 13:19:01 +0000rc-admin17304 at http://www.rc.umd.eduSonnet, "England in 1819"http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/sceptic/shelleysonnet.html
<div class="field field-name-field-published field-type-date field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="collex:date" datatype="gYearMonth"><span class="date-display-single" property="collex:date" datatype="gYearMonth" content="2004-01-01T00:00:00-05:00">January 2004</span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><table width="640" cellpadding="5" align="center">
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<h2>Sonnet, "England in 1819"</h2>
<h3>Percy Bysshe Shelley</h3>
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<span class="poemspace">An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,&#8212;<br/>
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow<br/>
Through public scorn,&#8212;mud from a muddy spring,&#8212;<br/>
Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,<br/>
But leech-like to their fainting country cling,<br/>
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,&#8212;<br/>
A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field.&#8212;<br/>
An army, which liberticide and prey<br/>
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield,&#8212;<br/>
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay ;<br/>
Religion Christless, Godless&#8212;a book sealed ;<br/>
A Senate,&#8212;Time's worst statute unrepealed,&#8212;<br/>
Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may<br/>
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.<br/>
<br/></span></td>
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</table></div></div></div><section class="field field-name-field-parent-section field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Section:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/node/31535">Electronic Editions</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-resource-index field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Resource:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/editions/sceptic/index.html">The Sceptic; A Poem: A Hemans-Byron Dialogue</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-authored-by-primary- field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Authored by (Primary):&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="role:AUT"><a href="/person/shelley-percy-bysshe">Shelley, Percy Bysshe</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/percy-bysshe-shelley-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Percy Bysshe Shelley</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/hume" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Hume</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1531" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Peterloo Massacre</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1759" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">skepticism</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/gibbon" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Gibbon</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/2736" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Quarterly Review</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4706" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Sceptic</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4707" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Manfred</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4708" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Childe Harold&#039;s Pilgrimage</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4709" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">woman poet</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/murray" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Murray</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4711" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">sceptic</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4712" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">skeptic</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4713" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">sceptical</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/title/common-sense" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Common Sense</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4715" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Forest Sanctuary</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4716" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Domestic Affections</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4717" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">poetic femininity</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4718" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">bluestocking</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4719" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">heterodoxy</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4720" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">epideictic</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4721" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">didactic</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/jeffrey-walker" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jeffrey Walker</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/bossuet" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Bossuet</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4724" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">1819</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4725" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">life after death</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-52 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Section:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/section/editions/the-sceptic-a-hemans-byron-dialogue" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Sceptic: A Hemans-Byron Dialogue</a></li></ul></section>Thu, 23 Feb 2012 13:18:58 +0000rc-admin17303 at http://www.rc.umd.eduThe Sceptic: A Poem For Its Time?http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/sceptic/poemforitstime.html
<div class="field field-name-field-published field-type-date field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="collex:date" datatype="gYearMonth"><span class="date-display-single" property="collex:date" datatype="gYearMonth" content="2004-01-01T00:00:00-05:00">January 2004</span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded">
<h2><i>The Sceptic</i>: A Poem For Its Time?</h2>
<h3>Barbara Taylor</h3>
<ol>
<li>Despite being published in 1820, <i>The Sceptic</i> more properly belongs to 1819 and takes its place among the vast number of literary works written during that year, many of which were published much later.<a href="#n1">[1]</a> Hemans sent the manuscript to her publisher in November of that year, stating firmly that the poem was "appropriate to the present state of public feeling, if it were brought out promptly."<a href="#n2">[2]</a> Her remarks were echoed by John Taylor Coleridge in the <i>Quarterly Review</i>, who noted that it ''undoubtedly&#8230;owed its being to the circumstances of its time."<a href="#n3">[3]</a> Thus both poet and critic deliberately identify the poem with its historical context and unknowingly foreshadow Sweet's contention, in the first part of this introduction, that it was a poem for an occasion.<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>While we could dismiss Hemans's remarks as part of an attempt to persuade Murray to publish the poem quickly, her statement encourages us to ask what was happening just at that particular time. What could call forth this poem and would encourage Murray to rush into print?<a href="#n4">[4]</a> Coleridge provides a partial answer by attributing the genesis of the poem to "a laudable indignation at the course which literature in many departments seemed lately to be taking in this country." Thus he places Hemans's work firmly within a literary context where the major voices were those of Byron and Shelley. And this might be a sufficient explanation, given Murray's interest in fostering the debate between Byron and Hemans (for he was also Byron's publisher and he sent him copy of <i>The Sceptic</i>).<a href="#n5">[5]</a> (<a href="/editions/sceptic/byronsletters.html">Read Byron's letter</a>)<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>However, the letters that Hemans wrote concerning the publication of <i>The Sceptic</i> and the reviews the poem received provide a distinct topical perspective to the poem. This perspective demands that we look carefully at the wider context in which the poem was written and also the predominately male publishing market where Hemans, a middle class woman, was offering her work. Therefore this second part of the introduction begins by focusing upon Hemans's letter introducing her poem to her publisher. Here her carefully worded approach not only promoted the poem's swift publication but also helped to foster the approving stance of the <i>Quarterly Review</i> and diminish the possibility of accusations of "blueness." After investigating the context into which <i>The Sceptic</i> was published and the debates where Hemans wanted her voice to be heard, I conclude the essay by glancing backwards to an earlier poem, "The Domestic Affections," to provide an insight into Hemans's determination to take part in the debate concerning infidelity and life after death.
<h3 align="center"><i>The Sceptic</i> under review</h3>
</li>
<li>As Sweet noted in the first part of this introduction <em>The Sceptic</em> has received comparatively little attention because much of the writing on Hemans has concentrated upon <em>The Records of Woman</em>, some of it searching in vain for a feminist voice, while others find it.<a href="#n6">[6]</a> Despite Kaplan's remark that Hemans is at her best in her public and patriotic verse, the earlier long poems are largely forgotten except in the work of Sweet, Trinder, Lootens and Wolfson and the later religious poetry has, until very recently, gone unregarded.<a href="#n7">[7]</a> Even Wolfson's new edition of Hemans manages to omit her late but impressive ode, "Despondency and Aspiration" and <i>The Sceptic</i> itself.<a href="#n8">[8]</a> When Hemans's predilection for topical subjects is mentioned, it is sometimes suggested that this tendency stemmed from the necessity to earn from her publishing and that she wrote on such subjects because they were "fashionable," a term which both trivializes and contains her in an appropriately female mode.<a href="#n9">[9]</a> Such gender-biased description frees interested readers of the 1819 scene from taking Hemans seriously or even including her in their pantheon of authors. Butler's <i>Romantics, Rebels and Reactionaries</i> fails to mention her as does Lucas's contentious <i>England and Englishness</i>, which concentrates entirely on writers of the male gender.<a href="#n10">[10]</a> I also note that Chandler's recent <i>England in 1819</i>, while extending the range of writers included within the canon, perceives Hemans merely as a contributor to the annuals and journals and not as a serious commentator on the political scene.<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>In his unpublished dissertation, Derek Furr proffers a limited and limiting reading of Hemans's <i>The Sceptic</i> as a sentimental poem that marks her first entrance on to the public platform as a pious mother of the nation. By focussing upon the events which followed the poem's 1820 publication, the Cato Street conspiracy and the trial of Queen Caroline, he provides a reason for the poem's successful reception. But at the same time he ignores the possibility that there may have been more to the poem's conception than Hemans's ambivalent fascination with Byron.<a href="#n11">[11]</a> We could, perhaps, excuse him for this, as the date of publication is a very blunt instrument to use when untying the knot of a poem's inspiration. And it is only recently that we have had access Hemans's letters to her publishers, which allow us to date the poem more accurately. However, published work on the letters, notably by Feldman, focuses upon the poet's negotiations within the literary marketplace rather than exploring the wider context surrounding those negotiations.<a href="#n12">[12]</a> And this is where, in its attempt to read <em>The Sceptic</em> through the lens provided by those letters and the contemporary reviews, this essay properly begins.
<h3 align="center">"Your much obliged F. Hemans"</h3>
</li>
<li>Hemans had been publishing her work regularly with Murray since 1816, and the small collection of 29 letters housed in the Murray Archive makes fascinating reading; they show the poet writing directly to the publisher to negotiate the sale of her poetry, sharing the literary gossip of the day and, on occasion, arguing with him.<a href="#n13">[13]</a> She is a business-like but, at times, an assertive and even combative correspondent. This surprisingly different voice of the poet, together with the apparent sincerity conveyed by the semi-private form of the letter, encourages us to accept them at face value. We thus forget that, even within a letter, a writer can frequently adopt a persona. A more careful analysis demonstrates Hemans's skill in handling her publisher.<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>There are 5 letters in the collection which refer to <i>The Sceptic</i>: the first, dated 17th November 1819 provides Murray with "an extract from a little poem I have by me" (<a href="/editions/sceptic/hemansletters.html#1">read Hemans's letter of 17th November 1819</a>). Another written on December 4th reminds him that he has not replied to her previous letter, (<a href="/editions/sceptic/hemansletters.html#2">read Hemans's letter of 4th December 1819</a>) while on December 18th she writes enclosing the corrected proofs of the poem. In this letter she remarks
<blockquote>have the goodness to present my thanks to Mr. Gifford for the trouble he has kindly taken in correcting the proofs, and to say that I have, I believe, attended to all his suggestions.<br/>
(<a href="/editions/sceptic/hemansletters.html#3">Read Hemans's letter of 18th December 1819</a>)</blockquote>
In this same letter she specifies, "I wish to be Mrs Hemans in the title page of the poem" (<a href="/editions/sceptic/poem.html#n1">read the note "MRS. HEMANS"</a>). In her letter dated January 1820 she says "I shall be glad if you will let me know the price of the poem, and the terms upon which it is published" <a href="#n14">[14]</a> (<a href="/editions/sceptic/hemansletters.html#4">read Hemans's letter of 15th January 1820</a>). A much later letter records Murray's intention to publish a second edition of the poem together with her elegy on the death of George III, "according to my wish in one small pamphlet."<a href="#n15">[15]</a> But it is the first of this group of letters that provides a lens through which we should read the poem.<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>This letter introducing <em>The Sceptic</em> to her publisher is unique among this collection for this time she addresses herself to William Gifford, Murray's literary advisor, rather than the publisher himself, presenting herself as a suppliant in search of advice<a href="#n16">[16]</a> (<a href="/editions/sceptic/hemansletters.html#1">read Hemans's letter of 17th November 1819</a>). Hemans tells Gifford that she encloses "a few extracts from a little poem I have now by me which would, I should think, be appropriate to the present state of public feeling, if it were brought out promptly." Look very carefully at her chosen words. As Sweet noted earlier, all the criticism she reviewed on <i>The Sceptic</i> agreed that it was "the work of a young woman unusually well-prepared to enter a public debate in a highly charged topic." And yet Hemans underplays her work by describing it as "a little poem I have now by me," allowing her reader to infer that the poem just happens to be there, rather than suggesting that what she is offering is a serious scholarly piece of work which may have occupied her (blue-stocking fashion?) for several weeks. It is almost as if she anticipated not only the <i>Quarterly Reviewer's</i> comments upon women's education, but also those of another reviewer in the <i>Edinburgh Monthly Review</i> who commented that the "verses [of Mrs Hemans] appear the spontaneous offspring of intense and noble feeling."<a href="#n17">[17]</a>(<a href="/editions/sceptic/edinburghreview.html#ed1">Read the <i>Edinburgh Monthly Review</i></a>) This same anxiety that writing poetry should be work for women is still evident much later in Gilfallen's comments (read also <a href="/editions/sceptic/footnotesDarklingplain.html#25">Note 25 in Sweet's "A darkling plain"</a>):
<blockquote>Mrs Hemans's poems are strictly effusions. And not a little of their charm springs form their unstudied and extempore character. This, too, is in keeping with the sex of the writer. You are saved the ludicrous image of a double-dyed Blue, in papers and morning wrapper, sweating at some stupendous treatise or tragedy from morn to noon, and from noon to dewy eve - you see a graceful and gifted women, passing from the cares of her family, and the enjoyments of society, to inscribe on her tablets some fine thought or feeling, which had throughout the day existed as a still sunshine upon her countenance, or perhaps a quiet unshed tear in her eye.<a href="#n18">[18]</a></blockquote>
All too aware of the dangers for herself and her publishing career if she appeared to be positioning her work in a controversial political arena, she further reassures her gentleman reader that the poem is
<blockquote>entirely free from political allusions, and is merely meant as a picture of the dangers resulting to public and private virtue and happiness from the doctrines of Infidelity.<a href="#n19">[19]</a></blockquote>
Thus she confirms that what she is offering is not part of
<blockquote>the free and intrepid course of speculation of which the boldness is more conspicuous than the wisdom, into which some of the most remarkable among the female literati of our times have freely and fearlessly plunged</blockquote>
</li>
<li>so feared by the <em>Edinburgh Monthly Review</em>. (<a href="/editions/sceptic/edinburghreview.html#ed1">Read the Edinburgh Monthly Review</a>, also go to <a href="/editions/sceptic/hartmanphd.html">Hartman's "Hemans, Hume, and Philosophical Scepticism</a>") This same review notes that
<blockquote>a coarse and chilling cento of the exploded fancies of modern scepticism, done into rhyme by the hand of a woman, would have been doubly disgusting.</blockquote>
Instead Hemans is "advocating the cause of religion"<a href="#n20">[20]</a>&#8212;a role that was approved by the <i>Quarterly Review</i>, which notes that "she is always pure in thought and expression, cheerful, affectionate, and pious."<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>Having therefore carefully positioned herself within an appropriate frame, she then steps out with tentative daring to mention that she has called her poem "the Sceptic"; only to retreat strategically by continuing, with apparent innocence, "but perhaps if a more suitable title should occur to you, you would have the kindness to suggest it to me."<a href="#n21">[21]</a> By this cautious ploy she manages not only to inform Gifford that her poem is part of the current controversy about Scepticism but also seeks to disarm him by suggesting that his greater knowledge of the literary world would enable him to provide "a more suitable title" than that chosen by the poem's author. And, of course, by inviting him to comment upon her work she ensures his complicity as becomes obvious in a later letter where she asks Murray to assure Gifford that she has "attended to all his suggestions."<a href="#n22">[22]</a> (<a href="/editions/sceptic/hemansletters.html#3">Go to Hemans's letter of 18th December 1819</a>)<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>Her final apologies, "for thus frequently troubling you, for which I can only apologize by pleading my inexperience and want of literary friends," stress her reliance upon him. In this double voiced letter Hemans has overtly presented the appearance of feminine dependence, flattering Gifford by asking for his advice; while covertly, but very clearly, signalling her intention to intervene in the masculine world of politics.<a href="#n23">[23]</a>
<h3 align="center">"The present state of feeling"</h3>
</li>
<li>This letter of November 1819, describing <em>The Sceptic</em> as a poem "appropriate to the present state of feeling, if it were brought out promptly," locates Hemans's poem very clearly within its historical context. Her comments remind us that the autumn of 1819 was a period of profound social unrest. The preceding years had seen the end of the long war with France and the return and decommissioning of much of the army; many soldiers had lost their occupation and tramped throughout the countryside looking for employment.<a href="#n24">[24]</a> It was also a period of poor harvests and consequently high bread prices and starvation. Hill describes the period from 1815 to 1820 as "one of the grimmest in modern British history, years of distress and class hatred, darkened by sullen discontent and periodic riots in the industrial areas and by a savage policy of repression by the government."<a href="#n25">[25]</a> These years were characterised by large public meetings and harsh government response: the Spa Fields riots in London and the suspension of Habeas Corpus in 1816. 1817 saw the introduction of the gagging acts forbidding unlicensed public meetings and the "March of the Blanketeers," a small group of cotton workers who marched from Manchester to London carrying their blankets to sleep on the way. 1817 was also the year of the Derbyshire Insurrection: "a pathetic outbreak of unemployed framework knitters, deliberately stirred up by Oliver the spy an agent provocateur; three poor men were hanged and eleven other transported for life."<a href="#n26">[26]</a> Shelley's essay, "An address to the people on the death of the Princess Charlotte," commemorates this execution rather than the more natural death of the princess.<a href="#n27">[27]</a><br/>
<br/></li>
<li>And August 1819 itself saw the Peterloo massacre, a peaceful reform meeting attended by thousands that was broken up by a military charge.<a href="#n28">[28]</a> The actions of the armed yeomanry, who murdered eleven demonstrators and injured several hundred others, created immediate and widespread outcry (<a href="/editions/sceptic/shelleysonnet.html">Read Shelley's Sonnet "England in 1819"</a>). The realisation that two women were among the dead and over a hundred women injured fuelled public feelings. These victims were the very ones who should have been able to rely upon the protection of the army.<a href="#n29">[29]</a> The anxiety created by this ferment of working class protest was heightened by extreme right wing Tories like Eldon and Sidmouth who "conjured up the horrors of jacobinism."<a href="#n30">[30]</a> And for a time it seemed that England was on the brink of revolution. Lucas, followed by Chandler, notes how it is easy to dismiss this notion now but in 1819 and 1820 the possibility of fighting in England seemed very real.<a href="#n31">[31]</a> Both Shelley and Byron foresaw the prospect of returning from exile to take part.<a href="#n32">[32]</a><br/>
<br/></li>
<li>The noticeable presence of women at political demonstrations exacerbated the fear felt by contemporary literary commentators (who in writing for the politicized literary journals of the day were always more than literary commentators) about dangerous ideas in poetry and particularly those expressed by women writers, who themselves were a source of anxiety.<a href="#n33">[33]</a> For a woman poet to write into this politicised space was to enter a potential minefield--just look at the splutterings of the Edinburgh Monthly Review which speaks of the "revolting exhibition of a female mind shorn of all its attractions, and wrapt in darkness and defiance." (<a href="/editions/sceptic/edinburghreview.html">Read the <i>Edinburgh Monthly Review</i></a>) However Hemans, because of her careful presentation of herself and her poem, was seen to be ranging herself on the side of the angels against "the most dangerous writer of the present day" whose work demonstrates both "sedition" and "audacious profaneness." Thus she was able to secure both speedy publication and a favourable reception for her work.
<h3 align="center">"Doctrines of infidelity"</h3>
</li>
<li>The best known exposition of Scepticism had figured in the opening stanzas of Canto II of <i>Childe Harold's Pilgrimage</i> (<a href="/editions/sceptic/Pilgrimage.html#canto2">see <i>Childe Harold's Pilgrimage</i></a>). Published in 1812, this poem had seen Byron rocket to fame; the initial print run of 500 copies was sold out in one morning and Murray sold a further 4,500 copies in the following six months.<a href="#n34">[34]</a> Here, as in <i>The Sceptic</i>, Byron's focus is on the possibility of life after death, but this materialist focus of scepticism was not confined to literature. It was paralleled by an intense flurry of lectures and pamphlets from the scientific community who sought to prove or disprove the possibility of life after death through speculative theory and dissection. Their investigations were disseminated not only through the press but also through public lectures, notably the Hunter Orations. This annual series was named after John Hunter (1783-1861), a respected surgeon and anatomist who had developed a theory that the principle of life differed in human beings and animals.<a href="#n35">[35]</a> This gave credence to the belief in life after death, the focal point of the debates. Hunter's pupils, William Lawrence FRS and John Abernethy, themselves both respected surgeons, disagreed with him. In his 1918 lecture Lawrence argued that "the phenomenon of life and mind result entirely from the bodily structure, and consequently, that death, which destroys the bodily structures, destroys the whole of man."<a href="#n36">[36]</a><br/>
<br/></li>
<li>This lecture was discussed in the <i>Quarterly Review</i> in July 1819 in a long review that commented on "the evil consequences arriving to society from the unguarded adoption" of Lawrence's views.<a href="#n37">[37]</a> And the echoes of this last phrase in Hemans's own letter to Gifford-- "the dangers resulting to public and private virtue and happiness from the doctrines of infidelity" suggest that she was aware of the review. It is quite possible that it had been a topic of conversation among the Anglican clerics who formed Hemans's literary advisors at this time, particularly as the review also covered <i>Remarks on Scepticism</i> by one Thomas Rennell, Christian Advocate at the University of Cambridge, the alma mater of the Bishop of Asaph, John Luxmoore.<a href="#n38">[38]</a> Heman's poem was written, or so her sister would have us believe, under the influence of Luxmoore.<a href="#n39">[39]</a><br/>
<br/>
So here at the end of the eighteen-teens, we have a group of influential scientists questioning the very foundations of Christian orthodoxy. Their work is widely accessible because it is publicized and reviewed in all the popular journals of the day. We have political unrest, as seen in the gatherings of crowds of working class men and women demanding representation and political reform. Their demands for political change paralleled the ongoing struggles for religious liberation by both the Dissenting Protestant groups and the Roman Catholics of the day. This was a long standing battle because, although the 1688 Act of Toleration had given Protestant Nonconformists the right to worship as they wished, they were still excluded from national and local government as well as from educational and social opportunities.<a href="#n40">[40]</a> During the 1790s the Dissenting sects had joined together to crusade with increasing militancy against this discrimination. Ryan, writing in <i>The Romantic Reformation</i>, notes that their "campaign for liberation from the tyrannies of prescription and privilege put religious freedom at the top of the national political agenda."<a href="#n41">[41]</a> The pressure tactics they employed provoked a hostile reaction from the Established Anglican community, and the ensuing disturbances, the "king and church" riots of 1791, seemed to threaten social stability. This social unrest was compounded by the evangelical revival, which although it later became a conservative force that protected Britain from radical political change, was at this point profoundly disturbing as it uncovered and stimulated disaffection from the Established Church.<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>In addition, we may need to remind ourselves that Britain has a long history of reform and revolution beginning with religious unrest. Ryan writes "The crucial formative events in modern British history&#8212;the Elizabethan Settlement, the Civil War, the Revolution of 1688, and the Hanoverian Succession&#8212;were religious crises whose resolution contributed essential components of what is called the British Constitution in Church and State."<a href="#n42">[42]</a> Therefore this open questioning of Christian orthodoxy, which we have seen in the work of both the scientists and the "most popular poet of the day" was profoundly unsettling. And particularly so for the members of the Established church.<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>Thus we could expect that Hemans, who dedicated her poem to the Bishop of St Asaph and was well aware of the influence that these Anglican Clergy had upon her publisher, should produce an innocuous poem supporting the status quo.
<h3 align="center">"Doctrines of Infidelity" II</h3>
</li>
<li>However <i>The Sceptic</i> does not merely portray an orthodox Christian response to the denial of life after death but rather Hemans's own personal recognition of the desolation of life without this promise, a desolation peculiarly applicable to women. This recognition springs from her own acute analysis of the gender politics of the male dominated society in which she lived. To feel the force of this we need to look backwards to her early poem, "The Domestic Affections." Here she clearly demonstrates that, while the male of the species can achieve fame and fortune and still find repose within a domestic space created by the loving labour of the women folk, the woman herself is denied this apotheosis until after death. Wolfson's astute reading of the poem demonstrates the gender specific nature of the comforts of home where "Domestic bliss has fix'd her calm abode" so that "what is projected as a refuge turns out to be very worldly, a reflexive ideal premised upon female restriction."<a href="#n43">[43]</a> The only answer to Hemans's question about a mother watching over her dying child, "But who may charm her sleepless pang to rest?" is faith.<a href="#n44">[44]</a> And the mother's ascent to heaven is couched in language, which as Wolfson notes echoes the earlier flight of masculine genius.<a href="#n45">[45]</a> Thus Hemans demonstrates that the mother's, and implicitly all women's, compensation is deferred until after death, and the whole economy of domestic affections is premised upon a belief in the afterlife.<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>It is this perception of emptiness and waste that informs the earlier part of <i>The Sceptic</i>. As the <i>Quarterly Review</i> says it simply rests the "truth of religion upon the necessity of it, on the utter misery and helpless of man without it." But although the nineteenth-century reviewers were quick to praise the poem's orthodoxy they were perhaps too quick. They did not notice the curious turn in the poem as it moves without a pause from Christ's sacrifice upon the cross to the death of Princess Charlotte, presenting it as an equivalent sacrifice. In her 1994 reading of the poem, Sweet suggests that Hemans thus claims that woman's suffering is equally foundational (or anti-foundational?)<a href="#n46">[46]</a>. The progress Hemans then conducts throughout the idyllic English hamlets depicting maternal figures teaching the scriptures to their children shows that the suffering princess and the mothers are the twin pillars that support the peaceful and productive domestic economy. Hemans's poem places woman right at the centre of the debate on scepticism and reveals the chasms that lurk beneath society. Thus the poem, while seeming to endorse the status quo, is in fact subversive.
<h3 align="center">In conclusion</h3>
</li>
<li>Although <i>The Sceptic</i> received favourable contemporary reviews, it has led to Hemans being characterised as a Tory apologist and, in this current post-Christian age, having her work dismissed because of its piety.<a href="#n47">[47]</a> Perhaps, realizing that, in part at least, these ideas stem from perceptions of Hemans drawn from her nineteenth-century memoirists (most notably her sister, herself a woman much praised for her piety) we could put them aside and look more closely at what she is doing.<a href="#n48">[48]</a> Other poems Hemans had produced during 1819, in <i>Tales and Historic Scenes</i>, demonstrate her acute analysis of social and gender politics; notably her perception that in every society under strain women and children are the chief sufferers.<a href="#n49">[49]</a> Quite obviously in 1819 society was under considerable stress; the most famous writer of the day was questioning the possibility of life after death and scandalizing the reading public with <i>Don Juan</i>. And in the clergy households Hemans frequents they are reading the <i>Quarterly Review</i> where it is apparent that scepticism is not confined to liberal thinkers but is rampant among contemporary scientists. Given the immediate audience she was writing for&#8212;the conservative established Anglican clergy of St. Asaph and her similarly conservative gentleman publisher, is it so very surprising that she should choose to clothe her critique of contemporary gender politics in apparently orthodox Christianity?<br/></li>
</ol>
<h4>Notes</h4><br/>
<p><br/><strong>
<a name="n1"> </a>1.</strong> James Chandler in <i>England in 1819</i> comments on the "extraordinary array of literary work from a particularly momentous year" (p.3) and lists among those works Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind," "England in 1819," <i>Prometheus Unbound</i> and <i>The Cenci</i>; the first two cantos of Byron's <i>Don Juan</i>; Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale," "On a Grecian Urn," "To Autumn," <i>The Fall of Hyperion</i>, "Lamia," "The Eve of St Agnes," and "La Belle Dame Sans Merci."</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n2"> </a>2.</strong> <a href="/editions/sceptic/hemansletters.html#1">Hemans's letter to Murray</a> dated 17th November 1819 (Murray Archive, London).</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n3"> </a>3.</strong> Article 5 of the <i>Quarterly Review</i> for October 1820 was headed as follows: 1. <i>The Restoration of the Works of Art to Italy</i> by Felicia Hemans. 2. <i>Tales and Historic Scenes in Verse</i> by Felicia Hemans. 3. <i>Translations form Camoens and Other Poets</i> by Felicia Hemans. 4. <i>The Sceptic: A Poem</i> by Mrs Hemans. 5. <i>Stanzas to the memory of the Late King</i>. By Mrs Hemans. <i>Quarterly Review</i>, October 1820. Jonathan Cutmore identifies John Coleridge as the author of this review on the evidence of a letter from Coleridge to Gifford, which is lodged in the Murray Archive. In this letter Coleridge seeks Gifford's comments on the review.</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n4"> </a>4.</strong> Hemans first introduced the poem to Gifford in November 1819 and it was published in January 1820. Her earlier <i>Modern Greece</i> took 4 months, from presentation to publication (February to June 1817), whereas <i>The Forest Sanctuary</i>, her final publication with Murray, took over a year.</p>
<p><br/>
<a name="n5"> </a> <strong>5.</strong> Byron's letters to their shared publisher comment on these actions, for example that of April 12, 1820, where he requests "no more modern poesy&#8212;I pray&#8212;neither Mrs Hewoman's&#8212;nor any female or male Tadpole of the Poet Turdsdworth's&#8212;nor his ragamuffins" (Marchand, VII, 158). Reiman, in his introduction to the Garland facsimile editions of Hemans's works, suggests that Byron construed Murray's gift of <i>The Sceptic</i> as an attempt "on the part of Murray and his envious knot of parson poets to convert him from skepticism to Christianity" (1978, ix).</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n6"> </a>6.</strong> For example, Anthony Harding in his essay, "Felicia Hemans and the Effacement of Woman," finds Hemans's failure to display a feminist stance "disappointing." However Paula Feldman's recent edition (Lexington 1999) proffers a coherent feminist reading of the poems. Hemans's <i>Records of Woman</i> feature in the collections of nineteenth-century poetry by Angela Leighton (1995), Isobel Armstrong (1996) &amp; Duncan Wu (1998).</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n7"> </a>7.</strong> Cora Kaplan comments approvingly about Hemans's long poems in <i>Salt and Bitter and Good</i> p. 95. Tricia Lootens's essay, "Hemans and Home: Victorianism, feminine 'Internal Enemies', and the Domestication of national Identity" refers to Hemans's 1812 poem "War and Peace." Peter Trinder's monograph, <i>Mrs Hemans</i>, comments favourably on Hemans's longer poems, including <i>The Sceptic</i> and "Despondency and Aspiration." Nan Sweet's essay, "History, Imperialism, and the Aesthetics of the Beautiful: Hemans and the Post-Napoleonic Moment," explores <i>The Restoration of the Works of Art To Italy</i> (1816) and <i>Modern Greece</i> (1817) while her unpublished doctoral dissertation, <i>The Bowl of Liberty: Felicia Hemans and the Romantic Mediterranean</i>, investigates Hemans's poetry up to 1824.</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n8"> </a>8.</strong> Susan Wolfson's new edition: <i>Felicia Hemans, Selected Poems, Letters, Reception Materials</i> (Oxford and Princeton: Princeton University Press), 2000.</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n9"> </a>9.</strong> St Clair in <i>Lord Elgin and the Marbles</i> (London, 1967) referred to her as "the fashionable Mrs Hemans" (p. 284) while Stephen Larrabee describes her as "Felicia Hemans, that dependable barometer of taste" (p. 259). Peter Cochran, in his 1995 essay "Fatal Fluency, fruitless dower; the eminently marketable Felicia Hemans," describes her as an "unscrupulous poetic parasite on events political and literary."</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n10"> </a>10.</strong> Marilyn Butler in <i>Romantics, Rebels and Reactionaries: English Literature and its Background</i> (Oxford, 1981) and John Lucas, <i>England and Englishness</i> (London, 1990).</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n11"> </a>11.</strong> The poem initially did well, selling 739 of the 750 copies immediately and Murray's ledgers show a reprinting of a further 750, the normal run for poetry at this time. Byron's poetry was now published in print runs of around 5,000. Hemans requested a 2nd edition of the poem together with <i>Stanzas to the late King</i> in 1823 and, according to the British Library index, it was published. However, Murray's archive holds no records of it, neither the number printed nor its sales.</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n12"> </a>12.</strong> Paula Feldman, "The Poet and the Profits: Felicia Hemans and the Literary Marketplace" <i>Keats-Shelley Journal</i> 46, Spring 1997, 148-176.</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n13"> </a>13.</strong> One example of Hemans disagreeing with Murray is in her letter dated February 26th 1817, where she says: "Had I been more fully aware of the very limited taste for the Arts which you inform me is displayed by the public, I should certainly have applied myself to some other subject; but from having seen so many works advertised on Sculpture, Paintings, &amp;c, I was naturally led to imagine the contrary," Letter in Murray Archive, London.</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n14"> </a>14.</strong> Despite the universal assertion that Captain Hemans left England for Rome in 1818, Hemans's remarks concerning him in this letter suggest that he was still in England at the time and may even have negotiated the details of publication with Murray. (<a href="/editions/sceptic/hemansletters.html#4">Read Hemans's letter of 15th January 1820</a>)</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n15"> </a>15.</strong> Letter dated May 17th 1821, located in the Murray Archive.</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n16"> </a>16.</strong> Letter dated November 17th 1819 in the Murray Archive.</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n17"> </a>17.</strong> Marlon Ross provides a detailed analysis of this review in <i>The Contours of Masculine Desire</i> (Oxford, 1989), p. 242-3.</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n18"> </a>18.</strong> Gilfallen in <i>Tait's Magazine</i>, 1847, quoted in Angela Leighton's <i>Victorian Women Poets: Writing Against the Heart</i> (Brighton 1992), p. 29.</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n19"> </a>19.</strong> Hemans's letter to Gifford November 17th 1819, Murray Archive, London</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n20"> </a>20.</strong> The first quotation is from <i>Edinburgh Monthly Review,</i> April 1820, and the second from the <i>Quarterly Review</i>, October 1820.</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n21"> </a>21.</strong> Hemans's letter dated November 17th 1819, Murray Archive, London.</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n22"> </a>22.</strong> Hemans's letter, dated 18th December 1819, Murray Archive, London.</p>
<p><br/>
<a name="n23"> </a> <strong>23.</strong> In <i>Victorian Poetry: Poetry, Poetics and Politics</i> (London, 1993), Armstrong has remarked on the "doubleness" women's poetry during the nineteenth century, which makes the affective conventions and feelings associated with a feminine modality problematic even though the writer may be working within these conventions (pp.341-2). A similar "doubleness" is operating within Hemans's letter: she conveys her desire for publication, even in the masculine sphere of politics, under the very proper guise of an acceptable feminine and submissive woman seeking advice and support.</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n24"> </a>24.</strong> Captain Hemans was one of those who lost his employment but at least he could retreat to his wife's family home (Memoir, 1839, p 25).</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n25"> </a>25.</strong> From C. P. Hill's <i>British Economic and Social History 1700-1975</i> (London, 1977), p. 68.</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n26"> </a>26.</strong> ibid.</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n27"> </a>27.</strong> <i>Shelley's Prose</i> 162-9.</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n28"> </a>28.</strong> Varied accounts of the Peterloo Massacre can be found in <i>Europe between the Revolutions 1815-1848</i> by Jacques Droz (1967), and Eric Hobsbawm's <i>The Age of Revolution</i>; McCord's <i>British History 1815-1906</i>, p.16-19. Chandler's <i>England in 1819</i> details the plans for the reform meeting on p.19-20. You can also read about the Peterloo Massacre on the Spartacus Educational website.</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n29"> </a>29.</strong> Linda Colley, <i>Britons: Forging the Nation</i>, p. 276.</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n30"> </a>30.</strong> Droz, p.131.</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n31"> </a>31.</strong> Lucas, p.7 and Chandler, p.20-22.</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n32"> </a>32.</strong> Chandler quotes from Shelley's letter to Leigh Hunt written on December 23, "I suppose we shall soon have to fight in England," p. 21.</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n33"> </a>33.</strong> See Marlon Ross, <i>The Contours of Masculine Desire</i> (1989).</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n34"> </a>34.</strong> Doris Langley Moore's <i>Lord Byron : Accounts Rendered</i> (London, 1974), p.181.</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n35"> </a>35.</strong> The contemporary interest in anatomy and dissection is reflected in Hilary Mantel's recent novel about John Hunter, <i>The Giant O'Brien</i>.</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n36"> </a>36.</strong> A Review of "<i>An Enquiry into the probability and Rationality of Mr Hunter's Theory of Life, being the subject of two Anatomical Lectures delivered before the Royal College of Surgeons of London</i> by John Abernethy and <i>Remarks on Scepticism</i> <i>being an answer to the views of Bichat, Sir T. C. Morgan and Mr Lawrence</i> by the Rev Thomas Rennell A.M. Christian Advocate at the University of Cambridge," <i>Quarterly Review</i>, July 1819, p. 6.</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n37"> </a>37.</strong> ibid.</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n38"> </a>38.</strong> John Luxmoore, Bishop of St Asaph and his son Charles, then Dean of St Asaph were both graduates of Cambridge University.</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n39"> </a>39.</strong> Harriett Hughes, Hemans's sister, wrote the influential 1839 <i>Memoir</i> which was the first volume of a seven volume edition of Hemans's poetry. Her own piety is recorded in Samuel Hall's <i>A Book of Memories</i> (first published 1871). See note 48.</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n40"> </a>40.</strong> See Chapter One, "A Sect of Dissenters," in Robert Ryan's <i>The Romantic Reformation</i> (Cambridge University Press, 1997) for a more detailed account.</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n41"> </a>41.</strong> ibid p.20.</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n42"> </a>42.</strong> ibid p.3.</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n43"> </a>43.</strong> Hemans, "The Domestic Affections" (London, 1812), p. 149, and Susan Wolfson's 1994 essay, "'The Domestic Affections' and 'the Spear of Minerva'," p.142.</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n44"> </a>44.</strong> "The Domestic Affections," p.167.</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n45"> </a>45.</strong> Wolfson, 1994, p. 144.</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n46"> </a>46.</strong> See also Nanora Sweet, <i>The Bowl of Liberty: Felicia Hemans and the Romantic Mediterranean</i> (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Michigan 1993), p. 339.</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n47"> </a>47.</strong> Derek Furr claims that <i>The Sceptic</i> was Hemans's "first attempt to define herself as a poetical arbiter of conservative, Christian and Political values" in his unpublished doctoral dissertation, p. 55.</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n48"> </a>48.</strong> Samuel Hall in his volume <i>A Book of Memories</i> (first published in 1871), admits that he knew "her sweet sister, Mrs Owen" better than Hemans herself whom he had met only once. He quotes extensively from the tablet underneath Mrs Owen's memorial window which notes amongst other eulogies that "For sixteen years she fulfilled indefatigably all the duties of a country clergyman's wife, and was unceasingly occupied in furthering deeds of charity and loving kindness" (p. 371). Hemans's sister married twice and is more usually known as Harriet Hughes.</p>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n49"> </a>49.</strong> Hemans's analysis of gender politics is continued in her <i>Records of Woman</i> as Wolfson notices in her 1994 essay, p. 145.</p>
</div></div></div><section class="field field-name-field-parent-section field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Section:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/node/31535">Electronic Editions</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-resource-index field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Resource:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/editions/sceptic/index.html">The Sceptic; A Poem: A Hemans-Byron Dialogue</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-authored-by-secondary- field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Authored by (Secondary):&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/person/taylor-barbara">Taylor, Barbara</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/percy-bysshe-shelley-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Percy Bysshe Shelley</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/hume" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Hume</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1531" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Peterloo Massacre</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1759" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">skepticism</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/gibbon" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Gibbon</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/2736" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Quarterly Review</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4706" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Sceptic</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4707" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Manfred</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4708" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Childe Harold&#039;s Pilgrimage</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4709" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">woman poet</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/murray" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Murray</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4711" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">sceptic</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4712" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">skeptic</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4713" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">sceptical</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/title/common-sense" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Common Sense</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4715" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Forest Sanctuary</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4716" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Domestic Affections</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4717" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">poetic femininity</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4718" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">bluestocking</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4719" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">heterodoxy</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4720" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">epideictic</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4721" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">didactic</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/jeffrey-walker" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jeffrey Walker</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/bossuet" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Bossuet</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4724" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">1819</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4725" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">life after death</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-52 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Section:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/section/editions/the-sceptic-a-hemans-byron-dialogue" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Sceptic: A Hemans-Byron Dialogue</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-country-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Country:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/country/france" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">France</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-person-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Person:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/john-taylor-coleridge" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">John Taylor Coleridge</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/barbara-taylor" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Barbara Taylor</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/sweet" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Sweet</a></li></ul></section>Thu, 23 Feb 2012 13:18:40 +0000rc-admin17300 at http://www.rc.umd.eduThe Sceptic; A Poemhttp://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/sceptic/poem.html
<div class="field field-name-field-published field-type-date field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="collex:date" datatype="gYearMonth"><span class="date-display-single" property="collex:date" datatype="gYearMonth" content="2004-01-01T00:00:00-05:00">January 2004</span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded">
<h2><i>The Sceptic; A Poem</i></h2>
<a href="#n1">BY MRS. HEMANS</a><br/><br/>
<h4>AUTHOR OF "THE RESTORATION OF THE WORKS OF ART TO ITALY;" "MODERN GREECE;" "TALES AND HISTORIC POEMS;" WALLACE'S INVOCATION TO BRUCE."</h4>
<p class="smalltext">"Leur raison, qu'ils prennent pour guide, ne pr&#233;sente &#224; leur esprit que des conjectures et des embarras; les absurdit&#233;s o&#249; ils tombent en niant la Religion deviennent plus insoutenables que les verit&#233;s [sic: v&#233;rit&#233;s] dont la hauteur les &#233;tonne; et pour ne vouloir pas croire des myster&#232;s [sic: myst&#232;res] incompr&#233;hensibles, ils suivent l'une apr&#232;s l'autre d'incompr&#233;hensibles erreurs." <i>Bossuet,</i> Oraisons fun&#233;bres <i>[sic: fun&#232;bres]</i>.
<br/>
<br/>
<a href="#n2">Translation</a> and <a href="/editions/sceptic/commentary.html">commentary</a> <a href="#n2"> </a></p>
<h3>THE SCEPTIC.</h3>
<span class="poemspace"><br/>
&#160;&#160; &#160;&#160;&#160;<a name="1"> </a><a href="#n4">When the young Eagle</a>, with Exulting eye,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Has learn'd to dare the splendor of the sky,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a href="#n5">And leave the Alps beneath him</a> in his course,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;To bathe his crest in morn's empyreal source,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;<strong><a name="5"> </a><span class="lineno">5</span></strong>&#160;&#160;Will his free wing, from that majestic height,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Descend to follow some wild meteor's light,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Which far below, with evanescent fire,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Shines to delude, and dazzles to expire ?<br/>
<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;No ! still thro' clouds he wins his upward way<br/>
&#160;<a name="10"> </a><strong class="lineno">10</strong>&#160;&#160;And proudly claims his heritage of day !<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a href="#n6">&#8212;And shall the spirit</a>, on whose ardent gaze,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;The day-spring from on high hath pour'd its blaze,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Turn from that pure effulgence, to the beam<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Of earth-born light, that sheds a treacherous gleam,<br/>
&#160;<strong><a name="15"> </a><span class="lineno">15</span></strong>&#160;&#160;Luring the wanderer, from the star of faith,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;To the deep valley of the shades of death ?<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;What bright exchange, what treasure shall be given,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;For the high birth-right of its hope in Heaven ?<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a href="#n7">If lost the gem</a> which empires could not buy,<br/>
&#160;<strong><a name="20"> </a><span class="lineno">20</span></strong>&#160;&#160;What yet remains ?&#8212; a dark eternity !<br/>
<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Is earth still Eden ?&#8212;might a Seraph guest,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Still, midst its chosen bowers delighted rest ?<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a href="#n8">Is all so cloudless</a> and so calm below,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;We seek no fairer scenes than life can show ?<br/>
&#160;<strong><a name="25"> </a><span class="lineno">25</span></strong>&#160;&#160;<a href="#n9">That the cold Sceptic</a>, in his pride elate,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Rejects the promise of a brighter state,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a href="#n10">And leaves the rock</a>, no tempest shall displace,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;To rear his dwelling on the quicksand's base ?<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Votary of doubt ! then join the festal throng,<br/>
&#160;<a name="30"> </a><strong class="lineno">30</strong>&#160;&#160;<a href="#n11">Bask in the sunbeam</a>, listen to the song,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Spread the rich board, and fill the wine-cup high,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;And bind the wreath ere yet the roses die !<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;'Tis well, thine eye is yet undimm'd by time,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;And thy heart bounds, exulting in its prime;<br/>
<a name="35"> </a>&#160;<strong class="lineno">35</strong>&#160;&#160;Smile then unmov'd at Wisdom's warning voice,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;And, in the glory of thy strength, rejoice !<br/>
<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;But life hath sterner tasks; e'en youth's brief hours,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Survive the beauty of their loveliest flowers;<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a href="#n12">The founts of joy</a>, where pilgrims rest from toil,<br/>
&#160;<a name="40"> </a><strong class="lineno">40</strong>&#160;&#160;Are few and distant on the desert soil;<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;The soul's pure flame the breath of storms must fan,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;And pain and sorrow claim their nursling&#8212; Man !<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Earth's noblest sons the bitter cup have shar'd&#8212;<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Proud child of reason ! how art thou prepar'd ?<br/>
<a name="45"> </a>&#160;<strong class="lineno">45</strong>&#160;&#160;When years, with silent might, thy frame have bow'd,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;And o'er thy spirit cast their wintry cloud,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a href="#n13">Will Memory soothe thee</a> on thy bed of pain,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;With the bright images of pleasure's train ?&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<br/>
<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a href="#n14">Yes !</a> as the sight of some far distant shore,<br/>
&#160;<a name="50"> </a><strong class="lineno">50</strong>&#160;&#160;Whose well-known scenes his foot shall tread no more,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a href="#n15">Would cheer the seaman</a>, by the eddying wave<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Drawn, vainly struggling, to th' unfathom'd grave !<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a href="#n16">Shall Hope</a>, the faithful cherub, hear thy call,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;She, who like heaven's own sunbeam, smiles for all ?<br/>
&#160;<a name="55"> </a><strong class="lineno">55</strong>&#160;&#160;Will she speak comfort ?&#8212;Thou hast shorn her plume,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;That might have rais'd thee far above the tomb,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;And hush'd the only voice whose angel tone<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Soothes when all melodies of joy are flown !&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<br/>
<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;For she was born beyond the stars to soar,<br/>
<a name="60"> </a>&#160;<strong class="lineno">60</strong>&#160;&#160;And kindling at the source of life, adore;<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Thou couldst not, mortal ! rivet to the earth<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Her eye, whose beam is of celestial birth;<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;She dwells with those who leave her pinion free,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;And sheds the dews of heaven on all but thee.&#160;<br/>
<br/>
<strong><a name="65"> </a><span class="lineno">65</span></strong>&#160;&#160;Yet few there are, so lonely, so bereft,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;But some true heart, that beats to theirs, is left,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;And, haply, one whose strong affection's power,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Unchang'd may triumph thro' misfortune's hour,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Still with fond care supports thy languid head,<br/>
<a name="70"> </a>&#160;<strong class="lineno">70</strong>&#160;&#160;<a href="#n17">And keeps unwearied</a> vigils by thy bed.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<br/>
<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;But thou ! whose thoughts have no blest home above,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a href="#n18">Captive of earth !</a> and canst thou dare to love ?<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;To nurse such feelings as delight to rest,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Within that hallow'd shrine&#8212;a parent's breast,<br/>
&#160;<strong><a name="75"> </a><span class="lineno">75</span></strong>&#160;&#160;To fix each hope, concentrate every tie,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;On one frail idol,&#8212;destined but to die,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Yet mock the faith that points to worlds of light,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a href="#n19">Where sever'd souls</a>, made perfect, re-unite ?<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Then tremble ! cling to every passing joy,<br/>
&#160;<strong><a name="80"> </a><span class="lineno">80</span></strong>&#160;&#160;Twin'd with the life a moment may destroy !<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;If there be sorrow in a parting tear,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Still let "for ever" vibrate on thine ear !<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;If some bright hour on rapture's wing hath flown,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Find more than anguish in the thought&#8212;'tis gone !<br/>
<br/>
<a name="85"> </a>&#160;<strong class="lineno">85</strong>&#160;&#160;<a href="#n20">Go !</a> to a voice such magic influence give,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Thou canst not lose its melody, and live;<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;And make an eye the lode-star of thy soul,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;And let a glance the springs of thought controul;<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Gaze on a mortal form with fond delight,<br/>
&#160;<strong><a name="90"> </a><span class="lineno">90</span></strong>&#160;&#160;Till the fair vision mingles with thy sight;<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;There seek thy blessings, there repose thy trust,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a href="#n21">Lean on the willow</a>, idolize the dust !<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Then, when thy treasure best repays thy care,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Think on that dread "for ever"&#8212;and despair !<br/>
<br/>
<a name="95"> </a>&#160;<strong class="lineno">95</strong>&#160;&#160;And oh ! no strange, unwonted storm there needs,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a href="#n22">To wreck at once</a> thy fragile ark of reeds.<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Watch well its course&#8212;explore with anxious eye,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Each little cloud that floats along the sky&#8212;<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Is the blue canopy serenely fair ?<br/>
<strong><a name="100"> </a><span class="lineno">100</span></strong>&#160;Yet may the thunderbolt unseen be there,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;And the bark sink, when peace and sunshine sleep<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a href="#n23">On the smooth bosom</a> of the waveless deep !<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Yes ! ere a sound, a sign, announce thy fate,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;May the blow fall which makes thee desolate !<br/>
<strong><a name="105"> </a><span class="lineno">105</span></strong>&#160;Not always heaven's destroying angel shrouds<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;His awful form in tempests and in clouds,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;He fills the summer-air with latent power,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;He hides his venom in the scented flower,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;He steals upon thee in the Zephyr's breath,<br/>
<strong><a name="110"> </a><span class="lineno">110</span></strong>&#160;And festal garlands veil the shafts of death !<br/>
<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Where art thou then, who thus didst rashly cast<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Thine all upon the mercy of the blast,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;And vainly hope the tree of life to find<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Rooted in sands that flit before the wind ?<br/>
<strong><a name="115"> </a><span class="lineno">115</span></strong>&#160;Is not that earth thy spirit lov'd so well,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;It wish'd not in a brighter sphere to dwell,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Become a desert now, a vale of gloom,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;O'ershadow'd with the midnight of the tomb ?<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Where shalt thou turn ?&#8212;it is not thine to raise<br/>
<strong><a name="120"> </a><span class="lineno">120</span></strong>&#160;To yon pure heaven, thy calm confiding gaze,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;No gleam reflected from that realm of rest,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Steals on the darkness of thy troubled breast,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Not for thine eye shall Faith divinely shed<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Her glory round the image of the dead;<br/>
<strong><a name="125"> </a><span class="lineno">125</span></strong>&#160;<a href="#n24">And if, when slumber's lonely couch</a> is prest,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;The form departed be thy spirit's guest,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;It bears no light from purer worlds to this;<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Thy future lends not e'en a dream of bliss.<br/>
<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;But who shall dare the Gate of Life to close,<br/>
<strong><a name="130"> </a><span class="lineno">130</span></strong>&#160;Or say, thus far the stream of mercy flows ?<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;That fount unseal'd, whose boundless waves embrace<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Each distant isle, and visit every race,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Pours from the Throne of God its current free,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Nor yet denies th' immortal draught to thee.<br/>
<strong><a name="135"> </a><span class="lineno">135</span></strong>&#160;Oh ! while the doom impends, not yet decreed,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;While yet th' Atoner hath not ceas'd to plead,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a href="#n25">While still, suspended</a> by a single hair,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;The sharp bright sword hangs quivering in the air,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Bow down thy heart to Him, who will not break<br/>
<strong><a name="140"> </a><span class="lineno">140</span></strong>&#160;The bruised reed; e'en yet, awake, awake !<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a href="#n26">Patient, because Eternal</a>, <a href="#n1a"><strong>[1]</strong></a> He may hear<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Thy prayer of agony with pitying ear,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;And send his chastening spirit from above,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;O'er the deep chaos of thy soul to move. <strong><br/>
<br/>
<a name="145"> </a><span class="lineno">145</span></strong>&#160;But seek thou mercy thro' His name alone,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;To whose unequall'd sorrows none was shown.<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Thro' Him, who here in mortal garb abode,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;As man to suffer, and to heal, as God;<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;And, born the sons of utmost time to bless,<br/>
<strong><a name="150"> </a><span class="lineno">150</span></strong>&#160;Endur'd all scorn, and aided all distress.<br/>
<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Call thou on Him&#8212;for He, in human form,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a href="#n27">Hath walk'd the waves</a> of Life, and still'd the storm.<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;He, when her hour of lingering grace was past,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;O'er Salem wept, relenting to the last,<br/>
<strong><a name="155"> </a><span class="lineno">155</span></strong>&#160;Wept with such tears as Judah's monarch pour'd<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;O'er his lost child, ungrateful, yet deplor'd;<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;And, offering guiltless blood that guilt might live,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a href="#n28">Taught from his Cross</a> the lesson&#8212;to forgive !<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Call thou on Him&#8212;his prayer e'en then arose,<br/>
<strong><a name="160"> </a><span class="lineno">160</span></strong>&#160;Breath'd in unpitied anguish, for his foes.<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;And haste !&#8212;ere bursts the lightning from on high,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a href="#n29">Fly to the City</a> of thy Refuge, fly ! <strong><a href="#n2a">[2]</a></strong><br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;So shall th' Avenger turn his steps away,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;And sheath his falchion, baffled of its prey. <strong><br/>
<br/>
<a name="165"> </a><span class="lineno">165</span></strong>&#160;Yet must long days roll on, ere peace shall brood,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;As the soft Halcyon, o'er thy heart subdued;<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Ere yet the dove of Heaven descend, to shed<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Inspiring influence o'er thy fallen head.<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#8212;He, who hath pin'd in dungeons, midst the shade<br/>
<strong><a name="170"> </a><span class="lineno">170</span></strong>&#160;Of such deep night as man for man hath made,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Thro' lingering years; if call'd at length to be,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Once more, by nature's boundless charter, free,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Shrinks feebly back, the blaze of noon to shun,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a href="#n30">Fainting at day</a>, and blasted by the sun !<br/>
<strong><br/>
<a name="175"> </a><span class="lineno">175</span></strong>&#160;Thus, when the captive soul hath long remain'd<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;In its own dread abyss of darkness chain'd,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;If the Deliverer, in his might, at last,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Its fetters, born of earth, to earth should cast<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;The beam of truth o'erpowers its dazzled sight,<br/>
<strong><a name="180"> </a><span class="lineno">180</span></strong>&#160;Trembling it sinks, and finds no joy in light.<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;But this will pass away&#8212;that spark of mind,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Within thy frame unquenchably enshrin'd,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a href="#n31">Shall live to triumph</a> in its bright'ning ray,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Born to be foster'd with etherial day.<br/>
<strong><a name="185"> </a><span class="lineno">185</span></strong>&#160;Then wilt thou bless the hour, when o'er thee pass'd,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;On wing of flame, the purifying blast,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;And sorrow's voice, thro' paths before untrod,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Like Sinai's trumpet, call'd thee to thy God !<br/>
<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;But hop'st thou, in thy panoply of pride,<br/>
<strong><a name="190"> </a><span class="lineno">190</span></strong>&#160;Heaven's messenger, affliction, to deride ?<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;In thine own strength unaided to defy,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;With Stoic smile, the arrows of the sky ?<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Torn by the vulture, fetter'd to the rock,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a href="#n32">Still, Demigod !</a> the tempest wilt thou mock ?<br/>
<strong><a name="195"> </a><span class="lineno">195</span></strong>&#160;Alas ! the tower that crests the mountain's brow,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;A thousand years may awe the vale below,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Yet not the less be shatter'd on its height,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;By one dread moment of the earthquake's might !<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;A thousand pangs thy bosom may have borne,<br/>
<strong><a name="200"> </a><span class="lineno">200</span></strong>&#160;In silent fortitude, or haughty scorn,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Till comes the one, the master-anguish, sent<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;To break the mighty heart that ne'er was bent.<br/>
<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Oh ! what is nature's strength ? the vacant eye,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;By mind deserted, hath a dread reply !<br/>
<strong><a name="205"> </a><span class="lineno">205</span></strong>&#160;The wild delirious laughter of despair,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;The mirth of frenzy&#8212;seek an answer there !<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Turn not away, tho' pity's cheek grow pale,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Close not thine ear against their awful tale.<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a href="#n33">They tell thee, reason</a>, wandering from the ray<br/>
<strong><a name="210"> </a><span class="lineno">210</span></strong>&#160;Of Faith, the blazing pillar of her way,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;In the mid-darkness of the stormy wave,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Forsook the struggling soul she could not save !<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Weep not, sad moralist ! o'er desert plains,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Strew'd with the wrecks of grandeur&#8212;mouldering fanes<br/>
<strong><a name="215"> </a><span class="lineno">215</span></strong>&#160;<a href="#n34">Arches of triumph</a>, long with weeds o'ergrown,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;And regal cities, now the serpent's own:<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Earth has more awful ruins&#8212;one lost mind,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Whose star is quench'd, hath lessons for mankind,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Of deeper import than each prostrate dome,<br/>
<strong><a name="220"> </a><span class="lineno">220</span></strong>&#160;Mingling its marble with the dust of Rome.<br/>
<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;But who with eye unshrinking shall explore<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;That waste, illum'd by reason's beam no more ?<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Who pierce the deep, mysterious clouds that roll<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Around the shatter'd temple of the soul,<br/>
<strong><a name="225"> </a><span class="lineno">225</span></strong>&#160;Curtain'd with midnight ?&#8212;low its columns lie,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a href="#n35">And dark the chambers of its imag'ry</a>, <a href="#n3a"><strong>[3]</strong></a><br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Sunk are its idols now&#8212;and God alone<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;May rear the fabrick, by their fall o'erthrown !<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Yet, from its inmost shrine, by storms laid bare,<br/>
<strong><a name="230"> </a><span class="lineno">230</span></strong>&#160;Is heard an oracle that cries&#8212;"Beware !<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Child of the dust ! but ransom'd of the skies !<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;One breath of Heaven&#8212;and thus thy glory dies !<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Haste, ere the hour of doom, draw nigh to Him<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Who dwells above between the cherubim !" <strong><br/>
<br/>
<a name="235"> </a><span class="lineno">235</span></strong>&#160;<a href="#n36">Spirit dethroned ! and check'd in mid career,</a><br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a href="#n36">Son of the morning ! exil'd from thy sphere</a>,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Tell us thy tale !&#8212;Perchance thy race was run<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;With Science, in the chariot of the sun;<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Free as the winds the paths of space to sweep,<br/>
<strong><a name="240"> </a><span class="lineno">240</span></strong>&#160;Traverse the untrodden kingdoms of the deep,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;And search the laws that Nature's springs controul,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;There tracing all&#8212;save Him who guides the whole !<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Haply thine eye its ardent glance had cast<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Thro' the dim shades, the portals of the past;<br/>
<strong><a name="245"> </a><span class="lineno">245</span></strong>&#160;By the bright lamp of thought thy care had fed<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;From the far beacon-lights of ages fled,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;The depths of time exploring, to retrace<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;The glorious march of many a vanish'd race.<br/>
<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Or did thy power pervade the living lyre,<br/>
<strong><a name="250"> </a><span class="lineno">250</span></strong>&#160;Till its deep chords became instinct with fire,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Silenced all meaner notes, and swell'd on high,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Full and alone, their mighty harmony,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;While woke each passion from its cell profound,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;And nations started at th' electric sound ?<br/>
<strong><a name="255"> </a><span class="lineno">255</span></strong>&#160;Lord of th' Ascendant ! what avails it now,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a href="#n37">Tho' bright the laurels</a> wav'd upon thy brow ?<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;What, tho' thy name, thro' distant empires heard,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Bade the heart bound, as doth a battle-word ?<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a href="#n38">Was it for this</a> thy still unwearied eye,<br/>
<strong><a name="260"> </a><span class="lineno">260</span></strong>&#160;<a href="#n39">Kept vigil</a> with the watch-fires of the sky,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;To make the secrets of all ages thine,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;And commune with majestic thoughts that shine<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;O'er Time's long shadowy pathway ?&#8212;hath thy mind<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Sever'd its lone dominions from mankind,<br/>
<strong><a name="265"> </a><span class="lineno">265</span></strong>&#160;For this to woo their homage ?&#8212;Thou hast sought<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;All, save the wisdom with salvation fraught,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Won every wreath&#8212;but that which will not die,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Nor aught neglected&#8212;save eternity !<br/>
<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;And did all fail thee, in the hour of wrath,<br/>
<strong><span class="lineno">270</span></strong>&#160;<a href="#n41">When burst th' o'erwhelming vials on thy path ?</a><br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Could not the voice of Fame inspire thee then,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;O spirit ! scepter'd by the sons of men,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;With an Immortal's courage, to sustain<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;The transient agonies of earthly pain ?<br/>
<strong><br/>
<a name="275"> </a><span class="lineno">275</span></strong>&#160;<a href="#n42">&#8212;One, one there was</a>, all-powerful to have sav'd,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;When the loud fury of the billow rav'd;<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;But Him thou knew'st not&#8212;and the light he lent<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Hath vanished from its ruin'd tenement,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;But left thee breathing, moving, lingering yet,<br/>
<strong><a name="280"> </a><span class="lineno">280</span></strong>&#160;A thing we shrink from&#8212;vainly to forget !<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#8212;Lift the dread veil no further&#8212;hide, oh ! hide<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a href="#n43">The bleeding form, the couch of suicide !</a><br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;The dagger, grasp'd in death&#8212;the brow, the eye,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Lifeless, yet stamp'd with rage and agony;<br/>
<strong><a name="285"> </a><span class="lineno">285</span></strong>&#160;The soul's dark traces left in many a line<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Graved on his mien, who died,&#8212;"and made no sign !"<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Approach not, gaze not&#8212;lest thy fever'd brain,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Too deep that image of despair retain;<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Angels of slumber ! o'er the midnight hour,<br/>
<strong><a name="290"> </a><span class="lineno">290</span></strong>&#160;Let not such visions claim unhallow'd power,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Lest the mind sink with terror, and above<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;See but th' Avenger's arm, forgot th' Atoner's love !<br/>
<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;O Thou! th' unseen, th' all-seeing !&#8212;Thou whose ways<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Mantled with darkness, mock all finite gaze,<br/>
<strong><a name="295"> </a><span class="lineno">295</span></strong>&#160;Before whose eyes the creatures of Thy hand,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Seraph and man, alike in weakness stand,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;And countless ages, trampling into clay<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Earth's empires on their march, are but a day;<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Father of worlds unknown, unnumber'd !&#8212;Thou,<br/>
<strong><a name="300"> </a><span class="lineno">300</span></strong>&#160;With whom all time is one eternal now ,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Who know'st no past, nor future&#8212;Thou whose breath<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Goes forth, and bears to myriads, life or death,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Look on us, guide us !&#8212;wanderers of a sea<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Wild and obscure, what are we, reft of Thee ?<br/>
<strong><a name="305"> </a><span class="lineno">305</span></strong>&#160;A thousand rocks, deep-hid, elude our sight,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;A star may set&#8212;and we are lost in night;<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;A breeze may waft us to the whirlpool's brink,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;A treach'rous song allure us&#8212;and we sink !<br/>
<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Oh ! by His love, who, veiling Godhead's light,<br/>
<strong><a name="310"> </a><span class="lineno">310</span></strong>&#160;To moments circumscrib'd the Infinite,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;And Heaven and Earth disdain'd not to ally<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;By that dread union&#8212;Man with Deity;<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Immortal tears o'er mortal woes who shed,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;And, ere he rais'd them, wept above the dead;<br/>
<strong><a name="315"> </a><span class="lineno">315</span></strong>&#160;Save, or we perish !&#8212;let Thy word controul<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;The earthquakes of that universe&#8212;the soul;<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Pervade the depths of passion&#8212;speak once more<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;The mighty mandate, guard of every shore,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;"Here shall thy waves be staid"&#8212;in grief, in pain,<br/>
<strong><a name="320"> </a><span class="lineno">320</span></strong>&#160;The fearful poise of reason's sphere maintain,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Thou, by whom suns are balanced !&#8212;thus secure<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;In Thee shall Faith and Fortitude endure;<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Conscious of Thee, unfaltering shall the just<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Look upward still, in high and holy trust,<br/>
<strong><a name="325"> </a><span class="lineno">325</span></strong>&#160;And, by affliction guided to Thy shrine,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;The first, last thought of suffering hearts be Thine.<br/>
<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;And oh ! be near, when, cloth'd with conquering power<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;The King of Terrors claims his own dread hour:<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;When, on the edge of that unknown abyss,<br/>
<strong><a name="330"> </a><span class="lineno">330</span></strong>&#160;Which darkly parts us from the realm of bliss,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Awe struck alike the timid and the brave,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Alike subdued the monarch and the slave,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Must drink the cup of trembling <strong><a href="#n4a">[4]</a></strong> &#8212;when we see<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Nought in the universe but death and Thee,<br/>
<strong><a name="335"> </a><span class="lineno">335</span></strong>&#160;Forsake us not;&#8212;if still, when life was young,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Faith to Thy bosom, as her home, hath sprung,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;If Hope's retreat hath been, through all the past,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a href="#n44">The shadow by the Rock</a> of Ages cast,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Father, forsake us not !&#8212;when tortures urge<br/>
<strong><a name="340"> </a><span class="lineno">340</span></strong>&#160;The shrinking soul to that mysterious verge,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;When from Thy justice to Thy love we fly,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;On Nature's conflict look with pitying eye,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Bid the strong wind, the fire, the earthquake cease,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a href="#n45">Come in the still small voice</a>, and whisper&#8212;peace ! <strong><a href="#n5a">[5]</a></strong><br/>
<strong><br/>
<a name="345"> </a><span class="lineno">345</span></strong>&#160;<a href="#n46">For oh ! 'tis awful</a>&#8212;He that hath beheld<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;The parting spirit, by its fears repell'd,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Cling in weak terror, to its earthly chain,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;And from the dizzy brink recoil, in vain;<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;He that hath seen the last convulsive throe<br/>
<strong><a name="350"> </a><span class="lineno">350</span></strong>&#160;Dissolve the union form'd and clos'd in woe,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Well knows, that hour is awful.&#8212;In the pride<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Of youth and health, by sufferings yet untried,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;We talk of Death, as something, which 'twere sweet<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;In Glory's arms exultingly to meet,<br/>
<strong><a name="355"> </a><span class="lineno">355</span></strong>&#160;A closing triumph, a majestic scene,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Where gazing nations watch the hero's mien,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;As, undismay'd amidst the tears of all,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a href="#n47">He folds his mantle</a>, regally to fall !<br/>
<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Hush, fond enthusiast !&#8212;still, obscure, and lone,<br/>
<strong><a name="360"> </a><span class="lineno">360</span></strong>&#160;Yet not less terrible because unknown,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Is the last hour of thousands&#8212;they retire<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;From life's throng'd path, unnoticed to expire,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a href="#n48">As the light leaf</a>, whose fall to ruin bears<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Some trembling insect's little world of cares,<br/>
<strong><a name="365"> </a><span class="lineno">365</span></strong>&#160;Descends in silence&#8212;while around waves on<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;The mighty forest, reckless what is gone !<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Such is man's doom&#8212;and, ere an hour be flown,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#8212;Start not, thou trifler !&#8212;such may be thine own.<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;But as life's current in its ebb draws near<br/>
<strong><a name="370"> </a><span class="lineno">370</span></strong>&#160;The shadowy gulph, there wakes a thought of fear,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;A thrilling thought, which, haply mock'd before,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;We fain would stifle&#8212;but it sleeps no more !<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;There are, who fly its murmurs midst the throng,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;That join the masque of revelry and song,<br/>
<strong><a name="375"> </a><span class="lineno">375</span></strong>&#160;Yet still Death's image, by its power restor'd,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Frowns midst the roses of the festal board,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;And, when deep shades o'er earth and ocean brood,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;And the heart owns the might of solitude,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Is its low whisper heard :&#8212;a note profound,<br/>
<strong><a name="380"> </a><span class="lineno">380</span></strong>&#160;But wild and startling as the trumpet-sound,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;That bursts, with sudden blast, the dead repose<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Of some proud city, storm'd by midnight foes !<br/>
<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Oh ! vainly reason's scornful voice would prove<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;That life hath nought to claim such lingering love,<br/>
<strong><a name="385"> </a><span class="lineno">385</span></strong>&#160;<a href="#n49">And ask</a>, if e'er the captive, half unchain'd,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Clung to the links which yet his step restrain'd ?<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;In vain philosophy, with tranquil pride,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Would mock the feelings she perchance can hide,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Call up the countless armies of the dead,<br/>
<strong><a name="390"> </a><span class="lineno">390</span></strong>&#160;Point to the pathway beaten by their tread,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;And say&#8212;"What wouldst thou ? Shall the fix'd decree,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Made for creation, be revers'd for thee ? "<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#8212;Poor, feeble aid !&#8212;proud Stoic ! ask not why,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;It is enough, that nature shrinks to die !<br/>
<strong><a name="395"> </a><span class="lineno">395</span></strong>&#160;Enough, that horror, which thy words upbraid,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Is her dread penalty, and must be paid !<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#8212;Search thy deep wisdom, solve the scarce defin'd<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;And mystic questions of the parting mind,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Half check'd, half utter'd&#8212;tell her, what shall burst<br/>
<strong><a name="400"> </a><span class="lineno">400</span></strong>&#160;In whelming grandeur, on her vision first,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;When freed from mortal films ?&#8212;what viewless world<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Shall first receive her wing, but half unfurl'd ?<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;What awful and unbodied beings guide<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Her timid flight thro' regions yet untried ?<br/>
<strong><a name="405"> </a><span class="lineno">405</span></strong>&#160;Say, if at once, her final doom to hear,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Before her God the trembler must appear,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Or wait that day of terror, when the sea<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Shall yield its hidden dead, and heaven and earth shall flee ?<br/>
<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Hast thou no answer ?&#8212;then deride no more<br/>
<strong><a name="410"> </a><span class="lineno">410</span></strong>&#160;The thoughts that shrink, yet cease not to explore<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Th' unknown, th' unseen, the future&#8212;tho' the heart,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;As at unearthly sounds, before them start,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Tho' the frame shudder, and the spirit sigh,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;They have their source in immortality !<br/>
<strong><a name="415"> </a><span class="lineno">415</span></strong>&#160;Whence, then, shall strength, which reason's aid denies,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;An equal to the mortal conflict rise ?<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;When, on the swift pale horse, whose lightning pace,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Where'er we fly, still wins the dreadful race,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;The mighty rider comes&#8212;oh ! whence shall aid<br/>
<strong><a name="420"> </a><span class="lineno">420</span></strong>&#160;Be drawn, to meet his rushing, undismay'd ?<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#8212;Whence, but from thee, Messiah !&#8212;thou hast drain'd<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;The bitter cup, till not the dregs remain'd,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;To thee the struggle and the pang were known,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;The mystic horror&#8212;all became thine own !<br/>
<strong><br/>
<a name="425"> </a><span class="lineno">425</span></strong>&#160;But did no hand celestial succour bring,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Till scorn and anguish haply lost their sting ?<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Came not th' Archangel, in the final hour,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;To arm thee with invulnerable power ?<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;No, Son of God ! upon thy sacred head,<br/>
<strong><a name="430"> </a><span class="lineno">430</span></strong>&#160;The shafts of wrath their tenfold fury shed,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;From man averted&#8212;and thy path on high,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Pass'd thro' the strait of fiercest agony;<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;For thus th' Eternal, with propitious eyes,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Receiv'd the last, th' almighty sacrifice !<br/>
<strong><br/>
<a name="435"> </a><span class="lineno">435</span></strong>&#160;But wake ! be glad, ye nations ! from the tomb,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Is won the vict'ry, and is fled the gloom !<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;The vale of death in conquest hath been trod,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Break forth in joy, ye ransom'd ! saith your God !<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Swell ye the raptures of the song afar,<br/>
<strong><a name="440"> </a><span class="lineno">440</span></strong>&#160;And hail with harps your bright and morning star.<br/>
<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;He rose ! the everlasting gates of day,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Receiv'd the King of Glory on his way !<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;The hope, the comforter of those who wept,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;And the first-fruits of them, in Him that slept.<br/>
<strong><a name="445"> </a><span class="lineno">445</span></strong>&#160;He rose, he triumph'd ! he will yet sustain<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Frail nature sinking in the strife of pain.<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Aided by Him, around the martyr's frame<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;When fiercely blaz'd a living shroud of flame,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Hath the firm soul exulted, and the voice<br/>
<strong><a name="450"> </a><span class="lineno">450</span></strong>&#160;Rais'd the victorious hymn, and cried, Rejoice !<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Aided by Him, tho' none the bed attend,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Where the lone sufferer dies without a friend,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;He, whom the busy world shall miss no more,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Than morn one dew-drop from her countless store,<br/>
<strong><a name="455"> </a><span class="lineno">455</span></strong>&#160;Earth's most neglected child, with trusting heart,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Call'd to the hope of glory, shall depart !<br/>
<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a href="#n50">And say, cold Sophist !</a> if by thee bereft<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Of that high hope, to misery what were left ?<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a href="#n51">But for the vision</a> of the days to be,<br/>
<strong><a name="460"> </a><span class="lineno">460</span></strong>&#160;But for the Comforter, despis'd by thee,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Should we not wither at the Chastener's look,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Should we not sink beneath our God's rebuke,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;When o'er our heads the desolating blast,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Fraught with inscrutable decrees, hath pass'd,<br/>
<strong><a name="465"> </a><span class="lineno">465</span></strong>&#160;And the stern power who seeks the noblest prey,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Hath call'd our fairest and our best away ?<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Should we not madden, when our eyes behold<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;All that we lov'd in marble stillness cold,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;No more responsive to our smile or sigh,<br/>
<strong><a name="470"> </a><span class="lineno">470</span></strong>&#160;Fix'd&#8212;frozen&#8212;silent&#8212;all mortality ?<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;But for the promise, all shall yet be well,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Would not the spirit in its pangs rebel,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Beneath such clouds as darken'd when the hand<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a href="#n52">Of wrath</a> lay heavy on our prostrate land,<br/>
<strong><a name="475"> </a><span class="lineno">475</span></strong>&#160;And Thou, just lent thy gladden'd isles to bless,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Then snatch'd from earth with all thy loveliness,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;With all a nation's blessings on thy head,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a href="#n53">O England's flower !</a> wert gather'd to the dead ?<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;But Thou didst teach us. Thou to every heart,<br/>
<strong><a name="480"> </a><span class="lineno">480</span></strong>&#160;Faith's lofty lesson didst thyself impart !<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;When fled the hope thro' all thy pangs which smil'd,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;When thy young bosom, o'er thy lifeless child,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a href="#n54">Yearn'd with vain longing</a>&#8212;still thy patient eye,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;To its last light, beam'd holy constancy !<br/>
<strong><a name="485"> </a><span class="lineno">485</span></strong>&#160;Torn from a lot in cloudless sunshine cast,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Amidst those agonies&#8212;thy first and last,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Thy pale lip, quivering with convulsive throes,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Breath'd not a plaint&#8212;and settled in repose;<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;While bow'd thy royal head to Him, whose power<br/>
<strong><a name="490"> </a><span class="lineno">490</span></strong>&#160;Spoke in the fiat of that midnight hour,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Who from the brightest vision of a throne,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Love, glory, empire, claim'd thee for his own,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;And spread such terror o'er the sea-girt coast,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;As blasted Israel, when her Ark was lost ! <strong><br/>
<br/>
<a name="495"> </a><span class="lineno">495</span></strong>&#160;"It is the will of God !"&#8212;yet, yet we hear<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;The words which clos'd thy beautiful career,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Yet should we mourn thee in thy blest abode,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;But for that thought&#8212;"It is the will of God !"<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Who shall arraign th' Eternal's dark decree,<br/>
<strong><a name="500"> </a><span class="lineno">500</span></strong>&#160;If not one murmur then escap'd from thee ?<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Oh ! still, tho' vanishing without a trace,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Thou hast not left one scion of thy race,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Still may thy memory bloom our vales among,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Hallow'd by freedom, and enshrin'd in song !<br/>
<strong><a name="505"> </a><span class="lineno">505</span></strong>&#160;Still may thy pure, majestic spirit dwell,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Bright on the isles which lov'd thy name so well,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;E'en as an angel, with presiding care,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;To wake and guard thine own high virtues there.<br/>
<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;For lo ! the hour when storm-presaging skies,<br/>
<strong><a name="510"> </a><span class="lineno">510</span></strong>&#160;Call on the watchers of the land to rise,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a href="#n55">To set the sign of fire</a> on every height, <strong><a href="#n6a">[6]</a></strong><br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;And o'er the mountains rear, with patriot might,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Prepar'd, if summon'd, in its cause to die,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;The banner of our faith the Cross of victory !<br/>
<strong><a name="515"> </a><span class="lineno">515</span></strong>&#160;By this hath England conquer'd&#8212;field and flood<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Have own'd her sovereignty&#8212;alone she stood,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;When chains o'er all the sceptered earth were thrown,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a href="#n56">In high and holy</a> singleness, alone,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;But mighty, in her God&#8212;and shall she now<br/>
<strong><a name="520"> </a><span class="lineno">520</span></strong>&#160;Forget before th'Omnipotent to bow ?<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;From the bright fountain of her glory turn,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Or bid strange fire upon his altars burn ?<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;No ! sever'd land midst rocks and billows rude,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Thron'd in thy majesty of solitude<br/>
<strong><a name="525"> </a><span class="lineno">525</span></strong>&#160;Still in the deep asylum of thy breast,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Shall the pure elements of greatness rest,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Virtue and faith, the tutelary powers,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Thy hearths that hallow, and defend thy towers !<br/>
<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a href="#n57">Still, where thy hamlet-vales</a>, O chosen isle !<br/>
<strong><a name="530"> </a><span class="lineno">530</span></strong>&#160;In the soft beauty of their verdure smile,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Where yew and elm o'ershade the lowly fanes,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;That guard the peasant's records and remains,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a href="#n58">May the blest</a> echos of the Sabbath-bell,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Sweet on the quiet of the woodlands swell,<br/>
<strong><a name="535"> </a><span class="lineno">535</span></strong>&#160;And from each cottage-dwelling of thy glades,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;When starlight glimmers through the deepening shades,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Devotion's voice in choral hymns arise,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;And bear the Land's warm incense to the skies.<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;There may the mother, as with anxious joy,<br/>
<strong><a name="540"> </a><span class="lineno">540</span></strong>&#160;To Heaven her lessons consecrate her boy,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Teach his young accents still th' immortal lays,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Of Zion's bards, in inspiration's days,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;When Angels, whispering thro' the cedar's shade,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Prophetic tones to Judah's harp convey'd;<br/>
<strong><a name="545"> </a><span class="lineno">545</span></strong>&#160;And as, her soul all glistening in her eyes,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;She bids the prayer of infancy arise,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Tell of His name, who left his Throne on high,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Earth's lowliest lot to bear and sanctify,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;His love divine, by keenest anguish tried,<br/>
<strong><a name="550"> </a><span class="lineno">550</span></strong>&#160;And fondly say&#8212;"My child, for thee He died !</span><br/>
<br/>
<h4>Notes</h4>
<p class="footnotes"><b><a name="n1"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>MRS. HEMANS</b><br/>
Hemans's letter to publisher John Murray dated 18th December 1820 (John Murray Archive, London) states: "I wish to be Mrs Hemans in the title page of the poem." This is the first time she has clearly stated a preference for this title to Murray; she was listed as Felicia Hemans in her last publication, <i>Tales and Historic Scenes</i> (1819).<br/>
<br/>
&#8212; <a href="/editions/sceptic/hemansletters.html#3">See the letter to John Murray</a><br/></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b><a name="n2"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>TRANSLATION</b><br/>
<b>Text:</b> Bossuet, [Jacques B&#233;nique], <i>Oraisons Fun&#232;bres</i>, ed. Jacques Truchet (Paris: Garnier, 1961), p. 273.<br/></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>Translation:</b> Speaking of sceptics, Bossuet says, "Their reason, which they take for a guide, presents to their spirit only conjectures and difficulties; the absurdities into which they fall in denying religion become more untenable than the truths whose loftiness astonishes them; and by not wishing to believe in incomprehensible mysteries, they follow one incomprehensible error after another."<br/>
<br/>
<b>The writer:</b> Bossuet (1627-1704), Bishop of Meaux, an apologist for French Catholicism, noted for his funeral orations and attempts to moderate the Revocation of the Edit of Nantes.
<br/></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b><a name="n3"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>JOHN MURRAY</b><br/>
John Murray (1778-1843), Hemans's publisher, had made his reputation as the leading publisher of the day, following the 1812 publication of Byron's <i>Childe Harold's Pilgrimage</i>. He numbered Scott, Southey, Coleridge and Crabbe among his authors, and his drawing room was the meeting place for the contemporary literary world. He also published the <i>Quarterly Review</i>.</p>
<p class="footnotes"><b><a name="n4"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>When the young Eagle...</b><br/>
Hemans's opening stanzas echo Byron's question in <i>Childe Harold's Pilgrimage</i> (hereafter CHP) Canto 2 and invert his imagery. It is useful to place Byron's text alongside hers.</p>
<p class="footnotes">
<a href="/editions/sceptic/Pilgrimage.html#canto2">&#8212;Go to <i>Childe Harold's Pilgrimage</i> ~Canto 2</a></p>
<p class="footnotes">
The young exulting eagle of this first line glances back to her 1812 poem, "The Domestic Affections," where she writes:<br/>
<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;On freedom's wing, that every wild explores<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;Through realms of space, th'aspiring eagle soars. (Wolfson's Hemans, p.8 l.165)<br/>
<br/>
This poem is a subtle exploration of contemporary gender politics.</p>
<p class="footnotes"><b><a name="n5"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>And leave the Alps beneath him...</b><br/>
<a href="/editions/sceptic/Pilgrimage.html#canto4.27">&#8212;Go to <i>Childe Harold's Pilgrimage</i> ~Canto 4, st. 27</a></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b><a name="n6"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>And shall the spirit...</b><br/>
Hemans inverts Byron's question in CHP 2.</p>
<p class="footnotes"><a href="/editions/sceptic/Pilgrimage.html#canto2.4">&#8212; Go to <i>Childe Harold's Pilgrimage</i> ~Canto 2, st. 4</a></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b><a name="n7"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>If lost the gem...</b><br/>
<a href="/editions/sceptic/Pilgrimage.html#canto4.93">&#8212; Go to <i>Childe Harold's Pilgrimage</i> ~Canto 4, st. 93</a></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b><a name="n8"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>Is all so cloudless...</b><br/>
<a href="/editions/sceptic/Pilgrimage.html#canto3.9298">&#8212; See the storm scene in <i>Childe Harold's Pilgrimage</i> ~Canto 3, st.92-98</a></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b><a name="n9"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>That the cold Sceptic...</b><br/>
Hartman suggests that although "Byron is the figure most behind her sceptic&#8212;but Hume is also a figure sitting behind 'the cold sceptic'."</p>
<p class="footnotes">&#8212;Refer to Hartman's "Hemans, Hume, and Philosophical Scepticism"</p>
<p class="footnotes"><b><a name="n10"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>And leaves the rock...</b><br/>
Hartman relates this to Hume's despair at finding himself upon "the barren rock" while Sweet investigates the ways in which Hemans and Byron belie faith with scepticism.</p>
<p class="footnotes">&#8212;Refer to Hartman's "Hemans, Hume, and Philosophical Scepticism" and Sweet's "'A darkling plain': Hemans, Byron, and <i>The Sceptic; A Poem</i>"</p>
<p class="footnotes"><b><a name="n11"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>Bask in the sunbeam...</b><br/>
This is reminiscent of Childe Harold who "Bask'd him in the noon-tide sun" CHP 1. 4</p>
<p class="footnotes"><a href="/editions/sceptic/Pilgrimage.html#canto1.4">&#8212;Go to <i>Childe Harold's Pilgrimage</i> ~Canto 1, st.4</a></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b><a name="n12"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>The founts of joy...</b><br/>
The pilgrims here may allude to <i>Childe Harold's Pilgrimage</i>.</p>
<p class="footnotes"><b><a name="n13"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>Will Memory soothe thee...</b><br/>
This recalls Byron's comment "And can I deem thee dead? When busy memory flashes on the brain?" CHP 2. 9.75-6</p>
<p class="footnotes"><a href="/editions/sceptic/Pilgrimage.html#canto2.9">&#8212; Go to <i>Childe Harold's Pilgrimage</i> ~Canto 2, st.9</a></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b><a name="n14"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>Yes !...</b><br/>
&#8212;See Sweet's comments on epic similes in "'A darkling plain': Hemans, Byron, and <i>The Sceptic; A Poem</i>"</p>
<p class="footnotes"><b><a name="n15"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>Would cheer the seaman...</b><br/>
Sweet sees a suggestion of Coleridge's ancient mariner here.<br/>
<br/>
&#8212;Refer to Sweet's "'A darkling plain': Hemans, Byron, and <i>The Sceptic; A Poem</i>"</p>
<p class="footnotes"><b><a name="n16"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>Shall Hope...</b><br/>
<a href="/editions/sceptic/Pilgrimage.html#canto4.72">&#8212; See here Byron's picture of Hope in <i>Childe Harold's Pilgrimage</i> ~Canto 4, st.72</a></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b><a name="n17"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>And keeps unwearied...</b><br/>
Compare with Hemans's "The Domestic Affections":</p>
<p class="footnotes">&#160;&#160;&#160;There, bending still, with fix'd and sleepless eye,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;There from her child, the mother learns&#8212;to die!<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;Explores, with fearful gaze, each mournful trace<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;Of ling'ring sickness in the faded face;<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;Thro' the sad night, when ev'ry hope is fled,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;Keeps her lone vigil by the suff'rer's bed. (Wolfson's Hemans, p.12, l. 321-6)</p>
<p class="footnotes"><b><a name="n18"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>Captive of earth !...</b><br/>
Look at the Egeria legend in CHP 4. 115-27 where for Byron "love" becomes but a "desiring phantasy" (121) and as if to reverse Hemans's preferences, reason is invoked in its stead, "our last and only place / Of refuge" (127).</p>
<p class="footnotes"><b><a name="n19"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>Where sever'd souls...</b><br/>
This argument from "love" is central in Hemans's poem; characteristically an enthymeme in Walker's terms, having "heart" (thymos), driven by contrast and audience investment, and closing by "capping" its inquiry in the lines immediately following this note.</p>
<p class="footnotes"><a href="/editions/sceptic/Pilgrimage.html#canto4.115.27">&#8212; See <i>Childe Harold's Pilgrimage</i> ~Canto 4, st. 115-27</a></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b><a name="n20"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>Go !...</b><br/>
A possible reference to Thomas Edleston, friend of Byron, who died shortly before Byron returned from his first travels to Greece and the Orient.</p>
<p class="footnotes"><a href="/editions/sceptic/Pilgrimage.html#canto2.95">&#8212;See <i>Childe Harold's Pilgrimage</i> ~Canto 2, st. 95</a></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b><a name="n21"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>Lean on the willow...</b><br/>
See Byron's "Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte":</p>
<p class="footnotes">&#160;&#160;&#160;Weigh'd in the balance, hero dust<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;Is vile as vulgar clay;&#8230;.<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;But yet methought the living great<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;Some higher sparks should animate. (ll.100-5)</p>
<p class="footnotes"><b><a name="n22"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>To wreck at once...</b><br/>
Here and below, Hemans alludes to Byron's play on arch and ark, bark and ark, throughout CHP 4, where Petrarchan themes of triumph and the lover's frail bark (alike expressions of hope) complicate each other richly.</p>
<p class="footnotes">&#8212;<a href="/editions/sceptic/Pilgrimage.html#canto4.92">See also <i>Childe Harold's Pilgrimage</i> ~Canto 4, st. 92</a>, which puns on the Arc de Triomphe and the biblical ark</p>
<p class="footnotes"><b><a name="n23"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>On the smooth bosom...</b><br/>
Look at CHP 4. 104-05, where Byron speaks of the "dying thunder," "the floating wreck," "a little bark of hope, / Once more to battle with the ocean."</p>
<p class="footnotes"><a href="/editions/sceptic/Pilgrimage.html#canto4.104.05">&#8212; See <i>Childe Harold's Pilgrimage</i> ~Canto 4, st. 104-05</a></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b><a name="n24"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>And if, when slumber's lonely couch...</b><br/>
See Byron's CHP 2:<br/>
<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;...and can I deem thee dead,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;When busy Memory flashes on my brain?<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;Well&#8212;I will dream that we may meet again,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;And woo the vision to my vacant breast. CHP 2.9.74-7</p>
<p class="footnotes"><a href="/editions/sceptic/Pilgrimage.html#canto2.9">&#8212; See <i>Childe Harold's Pilgrimage</i> ~Canto 2, st. 9</a></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b><a name="n25"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>While still, suspended...</b><br/>
Damocles, a member of the court of Dionysius I, was forced to eat a sumptuous dinner with a sword, suspended by a single hair, hanging over his head. This gives rise to the saying "the sword of Damocles."</p>
<p class="footnotes">
<b><a name="n26"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>Patient, because Eternal...</b><br/>
This Augustinian citation serves as an enthymeme, the (sophistical) partial syllogism typical of rhetoric. It invites the question, Are we to take the agitated humans in the poem, the sceptic and the speaker as well, as impatient and therefore not eternal?</p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>
<a name="n27"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>Hath walk'd the waves...</b><br/>
Reference to Christ walking upon the water, Matthew 4:48-9, and stilling the storm, Mark 4:37-41. Contrast with CHP 4.179 where humanity's "control stops with the shore."</p>
<p class="footnotes"><a href="/editions/sceptic/Pilgrimage.html#canto4.179">&#8212;See <i>Childe Harold's Pilgrimage</i> ~Canto 4, st. 179</a></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b><a name="n28"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>Taught from his Cross...</b><br/>
Look at CHP 4.135, where Byron says: "That curse shall be Forgiveness."</p>
<p class="footnotes"><a href="/editions/sceptic/Pilgrimage.html#canto4.135">&#8212;See <i>Childe Harold's Pilgrimage</i> ~Canto 4, st. 135</a></p>
<p class="footnotes">
<b><a name="n29"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>Fly to the City...</b><br/>
&#8212;Refer to Sweet's introductory essay "'A darkling plain': Hemans, Byron, and <i>The Sceptic; A Poem</i>"</p>
<p class="footnotes">
<b><a name="n30"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>Fainting at day...</b><br/>
&#8212; <a href="http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem363.html">See Byron's poem <i>The Prisoner of Chillon</i></a>, especially the closing stanzas:</p>
<div align="left">&#160;&#160;&#160;And then new tears came in my eye,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;And I felt troubled&#8212;and would fain<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;I had not left my recent chain,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;. . . .(st. xiii)<br/>
<br/></div>
<div align="left">&#160;&#160;&#160;My very chains and I grew friends,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;So much a long communion tends<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;To make us what we are: &#8212;even I<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;Regain'd my freedom with a sigh. (st. xiv)<br/>
<br/></div>
<p class="footnotes">
<b><a name="n31"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>Shall live to triumph...</b><br/>
See the developments of "ray" and "radiance" in Hemans's progress poem "The Restoration of the Works of Art to Italy":<br/>
<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;As one who starting from the day,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;From dark illusions, phantoms of dismay,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;With transport heighten'd by those ills of night,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;Hails the rich glories of expanding light;<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;E'en thus, awak'ning from thy dream of woe<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;While Heaven's own hues in radiance round thee grow. (l. 145-52)</p>
<p class="footnotes">and</p>
<p class="footnotes">&#160;&#160;&#160;Still, like some broken gem, whose quenchless beam,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;From each bright fragment pours its vital stream,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;'Tis thine, by fate unconquered, to dispense<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;From every part, some ray of excellence! (369-74)</p>
<p class="footnotes">and elsewhere (Wolfson's Hemans, pp. 22, 27).</p>
<p class="footnotes">And reflectively, in <a href="/editions/sceptic/Pilgrimage.html#Canto4">CHP 4</a>, see the following stanzas:</p>
<p class="footnotes">&#8212;st. 5</p>
<p class="footnotes">&#8212;st. 39</p>
<p class="footnotes">&#8212;st. 45</p>
<p class="footnotes">&#8212;st. 55</p>
<p class="footnotes">&#8212;st. 109</p>
<p class="footnotes">&#8212;st. 151</p>
<p class="footnotes">&#8212;st. 162</p>
<p class="footnotes">&#8212;st. 165</p>
<p class="footnotes">and others, including rainbow and iris imagery.</p>
<p class="footnotes">
<b><a name="n32"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>Still, Demigod !...</b><br/>
&#8212;See Byron's "Prometheus" l. 7 etc.:</p>
<p class="footnotes">&#160;&#160;&#160;The rock , the vulture, and the chain,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;All that the proud can feel of pain,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;The agony they do not show,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;The suffocating sense of woe,<br/>
. . . .</p>
<p class="footnotes">And also his "Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte" st. 16:</p>
<p class="footnotes">&#160;&#160;&#160;Or like the thief of fire from heaven,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;Wilt thou withstand the shock?<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;And share with him, the unforgiven,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;His vulture and his rock!</p>
<p class="footnotes">
<b><a name="n33"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>They tell thee, reason...</b><br/>
For Hemans, Reason is lost without the light of faith, her lines echo Dryden's "Religio Laici" where he writes:</p>
<p class="footnotes">&#160;&#160;&#160;Dim as the borrowed beams of moon and stars<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;To lonely, weary wandering travellers,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;Is reason to the soul (1987, p. 228)</p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>
<a name="n34"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>Arches of triumph...</b><br/>
&#8212; <a href="/editions/sceptic/Pilgrimage.html#canto4.92">See <i>Childe Harold's Pilgrimage</i> ~Canto 4, st. 92</a></p>
<p class="footnotes">"For this the conqueror rears/ The arch of triumph."</p>
<p class="footnotes">
<b><a name="n35"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>And dark the chambers of its imag'ry</b><br/>
This whole page glances at such portions of CHP 4 as the moonlight curse in the Coliseum, the "arches on arches" there, the ruins.</p>
<p class="footnotes"><a href="/editions/sceptic/Pilgrimage.html#canto4.128">&#8212;See <i>Childe Harold's Pilgrimage</i> ~Canto 4, st. 128</a></p>
<p class="footnotes">These are very much the "dark. . .chambers of. . .imagery" noted by Hemans in her <a href="#n3a">Note 3 from Ezekiel</a>. She would note that, coming after st. 127, which tries to rehabilitate "reason" after the episode with Egeria, this imagery renders perverse Byron's attempt to coax a new beginning from these ruins, "Forgiveness" (st. 35).</p>
<p class="footnotes">&#8212;<a href="#n3a">See Hemans's original Note 3 of <i>The Sceptic</i></a></p>
<p class="footnotes">
<b><a name="n36"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>Spirit dethroned !...</b><br/>
These two lines refer to Byron who was currently living in exile abroad. The reference to Lucifer highlights Byron's status as a fallen angel and therefore Satanic. See also Hemans's lyric "The Lost Pleiad," first published in <i>New Monthly Magazine</i>, December 1823, in Wolfson's Hemans p.432, and the discussion on the poem in McGann's <i>The Poetics of Sensibility</i> p.159-64. We should also note that the epigraph for "The Lost Pleiad," "Like the lost pleiad seen no more below," is taken from Byron's 1818 poem <i>Beppo</i>.</p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>
<a name="n37"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>Tho' bright the laurels...</b><br/>
A further reference to Byron.</p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>
<a name="n38"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>Was it for this...</b><br/>
"Was it for this. . .?" is an epic motif stemming from <i>The Aeneid</i> Bk. 4: where Aeneas struggles to renew his epic charge while entrammelled by Dido. The motif is echoed in CHP 1.54 with reference to the Maid of Saragoza (a passage that reverses Vergil by handing over the epic charge to the female lover).</p>
<p class="footnotes"><a href="/editions/sceptic/Pilgrimage.html#canto1.54">&#8212;See <i>Childe Harold's Pilgrimage</i> ~Canto 1, st. 54</a></p>
<p class="footnotes">Also in <i>Don Juan</i> 1, satirically, in Julia's harangue; and in Hemans's "The Abencerrage" where, as in CHP 1, it is spoken by a Spanish woman warrior. Hemans's heroine Zayda says:</p>
<p class="footnotes">&#160;&#160;&#160;Was it for this I loved thee?&#8212;Thou hast taught<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;My soul all grief, all bitterness of thought!<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;'Twill soon be past&#8212;I bow to Heaven's decree,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;Which bade each pang be minister'd by thee. 3.461(Wolfson's Hemans p.128)</p>
<p class="footnotes">See also <i>The Prelude</i> :</p>
<p class="footnotes">&#160;&#160;&#160;Was it for this<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;That one, the fairest of all rivers, loved<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;To blend his murmurs with my nurse's song<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;And, from his alder shades and rocky falls,<br/>
&#160;&#160;And from his fords and shadows, sent a voice<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;That flow'd along my dreams. 1.269-74.</p>
<p class="footnotes">
<b><a name="n39"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>Kept vigil...</b><br/>
An extended allusion to <i>Manfred</i> begins here. See the beginning of Act 1, scene 2 where Manfred says:</p>
<p class="footnotes">&#160;&#160;&#160;The spirits I have raised abandon me&#8212;<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;The spells which I have studied baffle me&#8212;<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;The remedy I reck'd of tortured me<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;I lean no more on superhuman aid<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;It hath no power upon the past, and for<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;The future, till the past be gulf'd in darkness,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;It is not of my search.</p>
<p class="footnotes">See also Act 2.3 where "This most steep fantastic pinnacle is sacred to our revels, or our vigils" and the beginning of Act 3.3:</p>
<p class="footnotes">&#160;&#160;&#160;'Tis strange enough: night after night, for years,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;He hath pursued long vigils in this tower,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;Without a witness...</p>
<p class="footnotes">Later in this same scene the speakers compare Manfred to his father who: "dwelt not with books and solitude, nor made the night/ A gloomy vigil."</p>
<p class="footnotes">
<b><a name="n41"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>When burst th' o'erwhelming vials on thy path ?</b><br/>
See <i>Manfred</i> Act 1, scene 1, where Byron writes:</p>
<p class="footnotes">&#160;&#160;&#160;And on thy head I pour the vial<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;Which doth devote thee to this trial;<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;Nor to slumber, nor to die,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;Shall be thy destiny;</p>
<p class="footnotes">These lines form part of an "incantation" that is evidently in the voice of a phantom Astarte. In echoing this voice, Hemans strengthens her claim on the role of sister-lover as explored by Susan Wolfson's recent essay in "Hemans and the Romance of Byron" in <em>Felicia Hemans: Reimagining Poetry in the Nineteenth Century.</em></p>
<p class="footnotes">
<b><a name="n42"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>One, one there was...</b><br/>
Another reference to Christ's stilling of the storm, Mark 4:37-41.</p>
<p class="footnotes">
<b><a name="n43"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>The bleeding form, the couch of suicide !</b><br/>
&#8212;See Sweet's discussion on the allusions to Byron in "'A darkling plain': Hemans, Byron, and <i>The Sceptic; A Poem</i>"</p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>
<a name="n44"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>The shadow by the Rock...</b><br/>
&#8212;Refer to the discussions in Sweet's essay "'A darkling plain': Hemans, Byron, and <i>The Sceptic; A Poem</i>"</p>
<p class="footnotes">
<b><a name="n45"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>Come in the still small voice...</b><br/>
&#8212;Refer to Sweet's essay "'A darkling plain': Hemans, Bryon and <i>The Sceptic; A Poem</i>"</p>
<p class="footnotes"><b><a name="n46"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>For oh ! 'tis awful...</b><br/>
Compare this with Hemans's own epitaph, which forms the funeral chant for her heroine Ximena, another warrior maid, in <em>The Siege of Valencia.</em></p>
<p class="footnotes">&#160;&#160;&#160;Calm on the bosom of thy God,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;Fair spirit! Rest thee now!<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;E'en while with us thy footsteps trod,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;His seal was on thy brow.</p>
<p class="footnotes">&#160;&#160;&#160;Dust to its narrow house beneath<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;Soul to its place on high!<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;They that have seen they look in death,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;No more may fear to die.</p>
<p class="footnotes">&#8212;<a href="/editions/sceptic/gallery.html#epitaph">Click here to see Hemans's memorial in the Gallery</a></p>
<p class="footnotes">
<b><a name="n47"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>He folds his mantle...</b><br/>
&#8212;Refer to Sweet's discussion in "'A darkling plain': Hemans, Byron, and <i>The Sceptic; A Poem</i>"</p>
<p class="footnotes">
<b><a name="n48"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>As the light leaf...</b><br/>
&#8212;Refer to Sweet's discussion on epic similes in "'A darkling plain': Hemans, Byron, and <i>The Sceptic; A Poem</i>," note 28.</p>
<p class="footnotes">
<b><a name="n49"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>And ask...</b><br/>
Hartman notes that Hemans and Hume use the same aphorism here.</p>
<p class="footnotes">&#8212;Refer to Hartman's "Hemans, Hume, and Philosophical Scepticism"</p>
<p class="footnotes"><b><a name="n50"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>A</b><b>nd say, cold Sophist !...</b><br/>
See here "And sophists, madly vain of dubious lore" in CHP 2 st.8, l.4.</p>
<p class="footnotes"><a href="/editions/sceptic/Pilgrimage.html#canto2.8">&#8212; Go to <i>Childe Harold's Pilgrimage</i> ~Canto 2, st.8</a></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b><a name="n51"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>But for the vision..</b>.<br/>
&#8212;See here the discussion on religious argument in Sweet's conference paper "Scepticism and Its Costs: Hemans's Reading of Byron"</p>
<p class="footnotes"><b><a name="n52"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>Of wrath...</b><br/>
Here Hemans delivers her central enthymeme, the subject of Sweet's conference paper on Hemans, Byron, and materialism, "Scepticism and its Costs: Hemans's Reading of Byron."</p>
<p class="footnotes"><b><a name="n53"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>O England's flower !...</b><br/>
See here Hemans's "Stanzas. . .on the Death of the Princess Charlotte," st. xviii, "The flower, the leaf, o'erwhelmed by winter snow." (N.B. First ed. may have "o'erwhelm'd").</p>
<p class="footnotes"><a href="/editions/sceptic/Pilgrimage.html#canto4.167">&#8212;See also Byron's tribute to the princess in <i>Childe Harold's Pilgrimage</i> ~Canto 4. st. 167-72</a></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b><a name="n54"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>Yearn'd with vain longing...</b><br/>
See Byron's "She clasps a babe, to whom her breast yields no relief," CHP 4.167.</p>
<p class="footnotes"><a href="/editions/sceptic/Pilgrimage.html#canto4.167">&#8212;Go to <i>Childe Harold's Pilgrimage</i> ~Canto 4, st. 167</a></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b><a name="n55"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>To set the sign of fire...</b><br/>
Compare with Hemans's "The Mountain-Fires" in <i>Welsh Melodies</i>, where beacon-fires light the vigils of Welsh forefathers (<i>Poems of Felicia Hemans</i> [Edinburgh and London: Blackwood, 1854], 150-51).</p>
<p class="footnotes"><b><a name="n56"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>In high and holy...</b><br/>
Compare with <i>Stanzas to the</i> <em>Memory of the Late King</em>, where Hemans writes:</p>
<p class="footnotes">&#160;&#160;&#160;Then came the noon of glory, which thy dreams<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;Perchance of yore had faintly prophesied ;<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;But what to thee the splendour of its beams?<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;The ice-rock glows not midst the summer's pride!<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;Nations leap'd up to joy&#8212;as streams that burst,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;At the warm touch of spring, their frozen chain,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;And o'er the plains, whose verdure once they nursed,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;Roll in exulting melody again;<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;And bright o'er earth the long majestic line<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;Of England's triumphs swept, to rouse all hearts&#8212;but thine.</p>
<p class="footnotes">&#160;&#160;&#160;Oh! What a dazzling vision, by the veil<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;That o'er thy spirit hung, was shut from thee,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;When sceptred chieftains, throng'd with palms to hail<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;The crowning isle, the anointed of the sea!<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;Within thy palaces the lords of earth<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;Met to rejoice&#8212;rich pageants glitter'd by,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;And stately revels imaged, in their mirth,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;The old magnificence of chivalry.<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;They reach'd not thee&#8212;amidst them, yet alone,<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;Stillness and gloom begirt one dim and shadowy throne.<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;[st. 7-8]</p>
<p class="footnotes"><b><a name="n57"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>Still, where thy hamlet-vales...</b><br/>
This passage shows Hemans's fondness for Mitford's "Our Village" sketches which began appearing in <i>Lady's Magazine</i> in 1813. Among Hemans's late, unfulfilled wishes was to write childhood recollections similar to these sketches.</p>
<p class="footnotes"><b><a name="n58"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>May the blest...</b><br/>
As in Hemans's last poem,"Sabbath Sonnet" which opens with the line: "How many blessed groups this hour are bending" (Wolfson's Hemans p.471)</p>
<p class="footnotes"><b><a name="n1a"> </a>Hemans's Notes for <i>The Sceptic; A Poem</i></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>1.</b> "He is patient, because He is eternal." St. Augustine.<br/>
[We retained Hemans's own notes numbered 1-6]</p>
<p class="footnotes"><b><a name="n2a"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>2.</b> Then ye shall appoint you cities, to be cities of refuge for you: that the slayer may flee thither which killeth any person at unawares.&#8212;And they shall be unto you cities of refuge from the avenger.&#8212;Numbers, chap. 35 vv.1-12.</p>
<p class="footnotes"><b><a name="n3a"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>3.</b> Every man in the chambers of his imagery.&#8212;Ezekiel, chap. 8. "And dark the chambers of its imag'ry"</p>
<p class="footnotes"><b><a name="n4a"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>4.</b> Thou hast drunken the dregs of the cup of trembling, and wrung them out.&#8212;Isaiah, chap. 51. [51.17]</p>
<p class="footnotes"><b><a name="n5a"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>5.</b> And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord ; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: and after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.&#8212;Kings, book 1. chap. 19. [19.11-12]</p>
<p class="footnotes">
<b><a name="n6a"> </a></b></p>
<p class="footnotes"><b>6.</b> And set up a sign of fire.&#8212;Jeremiah, chap. 6.</p>
</div></div></div><section class="field field-name-field-parent-section field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Section:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/node/31535">Electronic Editions</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-resource-index field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Resource:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/editions/sceptic/index.html">The Sceptic; A Poem: A Hemans-Byron Dialogue</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/percy-bysshe-shelley-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Percy Bysshe Shelley</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/hume" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Hume</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1531" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Peterloo Massacre</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1759" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">skepticism</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/gibbon" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Gibbon</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/2736" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Quarterly Review</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4706" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Sceptic</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4707" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Manfred</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4708" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Childe Harold&#039;s Pilgrimage</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4709" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">woman poet</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/murray" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Murray</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4711" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">sceptic</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4712" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">skeptic</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4713" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">sceptical</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/title/common-sense" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Common Sense</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4715" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Forest Sanctuary</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4716" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Domestic Affections</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4717" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">poetic femininity</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4718" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">bluestocking</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4719" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">heterodoxy</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4720" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">epideictic</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4721" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">didactic</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/jeffrey-walker" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jeffrey Walker</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/bossuet" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Bossuet</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4724" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">1819</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4725" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">life after death</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-52 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Section:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/section/editions/the-sceptic-a-hemans-byron-dialogue" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Sceptic: A Hemans-Byron Dialogue</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-city-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">City:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/city/rome" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Rome</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-country-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Country:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/country/greece" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Greece</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/country/italy" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Italy</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-naturalfeature-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">NaturalFeature:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/natural-feature/alps" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Alps</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/natural-feature/sinai" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Sinai</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-organization-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Organization:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/organization/us-federal-reserve" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">US Federal Reserve</a></li></ul></section>Thu, 23 Feb 2012 13:18:21 +0000rc-admin17299 at http://www.rc.umd.eduThe Sceptic; A Poem: A Hemans-Byron Dialoguehttp://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/sceptic/index.html
<div class="field field-name-field-index-banner field-type-image field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-index-banner" src="http://www.rc.umd.edu/sites/default/files/styles/index_banner/public/index_banner%5B9%5D.jpg?itok=MJy29daY" width="800" height="267" alt="The Sceptic, Edited by Nanora Sweet and Barbara Taylor" title="The Sceptic, Edited by Nanora Sweet and Barbara Taylor" /></figure></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><div id="IndexContent">
<h2 class="TOC">Table of Contents</h2>
<ul id="TOCContent">
<div class="LargeObject"><a href="/editions/sceptic/about.html" title="">About this Hypertext</a></div>
<div class="LargeObject"><a href="/editions/sceptic/poem.html" title=""><em>The Sceptic: A Poem</em></a></div>
<p class="IndexText">Based upon the facsimile of the 1820 edition, with commentary highlighting the textual and ideological links between Hemans and Byron.</p>
<div class="LargeObject"><a href="/editions/sceptic/tour.html" title="">A Tour of <em>The Sceptic</em></a></div>
<p class="IndexText">Nanora Sweet takes the reader step by step through the poem's contents and describes its form.</p>
<div class="LargeObject"><a href="/editions/sceptic/context.html" title="">Literary and Historical Context</a></div>
<p class="IndexText">Analysis of the poem's literary and philosophical contexts, with copies of the contemporary reviews and the letters from both Hemans and Byron that are referred to throughout the site.</p>
<div class="LargeObject"><a href="/editions/sceptic/genderandgenre.html" title="">Gender and Genre</a></div>
<p class="IndexText">Three original essays exploring the interactions between the gender of the poet and the genre of her poem and how these affect the poem's reception, both upon its publication in 1820, and among critics now.</p>
<div class="LargeObject"><a href="/editions/sceptic/gallery.html" title="">Gallery</a></div>
<p class="IndexText">Portraits and photographs relating to The Sceptic.</p>
<div class="LargeObject"><a href="/editions/sceptic/bibliography.html" title="">Bibliography</a></div>
<p class="IndexText">Primary, secondary, and Web sources.</p>
</ul></div></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-published field-type-date field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2004-01-01T00:00:00-05:00">January 2004</span></div></div></div><section class="field field-name-field-main-author field-type-entityreference field-label-inline clearfix view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Main Author:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/person/hemans-felicia-dorothea-browne">Hemans, Felicia Dorothea Browne</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-edited-by field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Edited By:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/person/sweet-nanora">Sweet, Nanora</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/person/taylor-barbara">Taylor, Barbara</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-resource-technical-editor field-type-entityreference field-label-inline clearfix view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Resource Technical Editor:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/person/singer-kate">Singer, Kate</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-parent-section field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Section:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/node/31535">Electronic Editions</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/6890" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">romantic women&#039;s poetry</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4706" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Sceptic</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4707" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Manfred</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4708" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Childe Harold&#039;s Pilgrimage</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/scepticism" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">scepticism</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1531" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Peterloo Massacre</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4715" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Forest Sanctuary</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4716" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Domestic Affections</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4717" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">poetic femininity</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4718" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">bluestocking</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4719" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">heterodoxy</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4720" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">epideictic</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4721" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">didactic</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4724" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">1819</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/2736" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Quarterly Review</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags/romantic-womens-writing" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">romantic women&#039;s writing</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-person-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Person:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/lord-byron" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Lord Byron</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/felicia-hemans" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Felicia Hemans</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/murray" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Murray</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/david-hume-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">David Hume</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/percy-bysshe-shelley-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Percy Bysshe Shelley</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/edward-gibbon-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Edward Gibbon</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/jeffrey-walker" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jeffrey Walker</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/bossuet" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Bossuet</a></li></ul></section>Thu, 23 Feb 2012 13:18:18 +0000rc-admin17298 at http://www.rc.umd.eduExtract from Debating Confession: The Poetics of Self-expression, 1815-1850, an unpublished Ph. D. thesis (University of London, 2001).http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/sceptic/hartmanphd.html
<div class="field field-name-field-published field-type-date field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="collex:date" datatype="gYearMonth"><span class="date-display-single" property="collex:date" datatype="gYearMonth" content="2004-01-01T00:00:00-05:00">January 2004</span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><!DOCTYPE html SYSTEM "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head><title></title></head>
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<h2>Extract from <em>Debating Confession: The Poetics of Self-expression, 1815-1850</em>, an unpublished Ph. D. thesis (University of London, 2001).</h2>
<h3>Anne Hartman</h3>
<i>We present an extract (p.24-36) from Hartman's third chapter, "Tormenting the Confessor: Felicia Hemans and the Constructed Self."<br/>
<br/>
Other poems investigated in this chapter are "A Spirit's Return" from <em>Songs of the Affections</em> (1829), "To My Own Portrait" (first published 1836) and "Our Daily Paths," one of Hemans's responses to Wordsworth. The chapter closes with a discussion of</i> The Forest Sanctuary.<br/>
<br/>
<div class="center">
<h3>Hemans, Hume, and Philosophical Scepticism</h3>
</div>
<ol>
<li>The poems which I have discussed thus far were written in the later part of Hemans's career. I shall for the remainder of this chapter focus on a somewhat earlier period, in this section discussing <em>The Sceptic</em> (1820) and in the final section <em>The Forest Sanctuary</em> (1825). Having argued that Hemans writes a particular kind of confessional lyric, which takes the confessional lyric as its subject, I shall now focus my attention on the philosophical context for her desire to write a dramatic poem about the "record of a mind," her 1825 extended monodrama <em>The Forest Sanctuary</em>, the poem which she regarded as her finest and which is arguably her most intellectually ambitious and poetically accomplished. I shall be interested in delineating the exact nature of the debate in which she is involved, suggesting the reasons for her interest in the emergent science of the mind, and its consequences for her aesthetic. In my discussion of "Our Daily Paths," I pointed out how the speaker's experience of the world corresponds to the model of the mind proposed by empiricist philosophers, in particular Locke and Hume. I also have suggested that Hemans's aesthetic is of the Humean variety, and that she develops a model of the self as construct, querying how the mind becomes subject, as against the transcendental self of high romanticism.<a href="#n1">[1]</a> While we can observe a strong current of Humean influence in her work, she acquires these Humean ideas via the Common Sense philosophers, whose work comes out of Humean arguments but differentiates itself from Hume, particularly with regard to the tendency of his arguments to undermine religious faith, and also the extreme form of scepticism with which he was associated, somewhat unfairly, at the time. Hemans's negotiation with Hume is linked with her investment in a poetics of sensibility and falls squarely within the position of the Common Sense philosophers, who sought to carry on
the analysis of mind within a framework which gave credence to innate tendencies of human nature and intuition and which managed to reconcile the materialist tendencies of the science of the mind with a religious sensibility.<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>As I have already suggested through my readings of her lyrics, Hemans mimics the gendered structure of metaphysical thought, but she does so in way which loosens its claims to truth. The discourse against which she is working is overtly displayed in the many reviews of her poetry; we may take as an example a commentary from <em>The Edinburgh Monthly Review</em> on <em>The Sceptic</em>, to which I shall be turning shortly. The review begins by positioning her work within the expressive paradigm and a gendered discourse of sensibility: "the verses of Mrs. Hemans appear the spontaneous offspring of intense and noble feeling, governed by a clear understanding, and fashioned into elegance by an exquisite delicacy and precision of taste."<a href="#n2">[2]</a> As we have seen, in her lyrics Hemans partly occupies this characterization, but nearly always resists a complete identification with it. The reviewer initially applauds Hemans's choice of subject matter and her method of address, described as never ceasing in its delicacy to be "strictly <em>feminine</em>" (374). The reviewer imagines a worst-case scenario of "a coarse and chilling cento" written by a woman which displays "the revolting exhibition of a female mind, shorn of all its attractions, and wrapt in darkness and defiance" (374). For this reviewer, Hemans manages the remarkable feat of both achieving the qualities praised in male poets, while not trespassing the decorum required from a woman: she keeps
<blockquote>[ . . .] every talent in sweet and modest subordination to the dignity of womanhood,&#8211;emulating the other sex in the graceful vigour of genius, but scrupulously abstaining from all that may betray unfeminine temerity or coarseness in its exhibitions. [. . .] It is here that we recognise the graceful and appropriate direction of the female intellect, and not in that sneering scepticism which in man is offensive&#8211;in woman, monstrous and revolting. (375) (<a href="/editions/sceptic/edinburghreview.html">Go to <em>the Edinburgh Monthly Review</em></a>)</blockquote>
Venturing onto the grounds of philosophical inquiry was a risky move for a woman writer since the incorrect exercise of the female intellect can result in the monstrous, and Hemans is skillful in her ability to remain within the acceptable boundaries of feminine behaviour. Chad Edgar has shown how Hemans's career in the literary public sphere was effectively curtailed by her male reviewers when she attempted to write on political topics instead of the occasional effusive lyric.<a href="#n3">[3]</a><br/>
<br/></li>
<li>The rigid gender essentialism of this discourse surrounding philosophical thought takes us quite far in understanding what Hemans has to gain from a model of self as construct, and as composed of difference, as opposed to the universal subject presumed by high romanticism. We find that Hume himself was vulnerable to attack on not dissimilar grounds for his own transgression of conventional gendered categories. In 1820, a reviewer in <em>The Edinburgh Monthly Review</em> assesses Hume, saying that while he possessed refinement of mind, good taste, a fine imagination, and a talent for composition, his reasoning power and judgment were severely lacking;
<blockquote>His reasoning powers were not of that masculine and vigorous kind, which seizes at once the main points of the subject to which they are applied&#8211;shaking off all minor objections&#8211;diverging into no bye-paths &#8211; but holding an onward and undeviating course to the truth. The tendency of Hume's reasoning faculty was towards the examination of minor obstacles, and the exploring of untrodden paths.<a href="#n4">[4]</a><br/></blockquote>
</li>
<li>To a late twentieth-century reader, this criticism works rather to endear Hume to us, but in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it was seen as too open to an alarming relativism. Further, we can see how Hume's method of argumentation deviated from the norm of masculine rationality, thus disturbing the reigning gender ideology, which gives us a further clue to his appeal for the woman writer.<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>Feminist philosophers have much invested in defining identity as something which is a process and which is relational and fluid, rather than that which is premised upon a priori, transcendental grounds. A recent example of this can be found in Christine Battersby's <em>The Phenomenal Woman: Feminist Metaphysics and the Patterns of Identity</em> (1998) which outlines a "theoretical grounding for a self which is born, and which is gradually shaped as it negotiates and renegotiates otherness, registering the resonances and echoes that the repeated movements produce."<a href="#n5">[5]</a> While Battersby is pursuing a phenomenological approach to identity, we can see how the Humean model of the self provides a similar kind of latitude. Feminist philosophers have in recent years rediscovered Hume as possible source for a feminist epistemology, although there are differences in opinion on this account.<a href="#n6">[6]</a> Annette Baier, perhaps Hume's most influential feminist advocate, believes that, philosophically, his outsider status invoked his self-definition as "monstrous," and as such he was "an unwitting virtual woman."<a href="#n7">[7]</a> Baier emphasizes how Hume achieved a shift in the understanding of reason:
<blockquote>From being a quasi-divine faculty and something that we share with God, it becomes a natural capacity and one that we essentially share with those who learn from experience in the way we do, sharing expressive body language, sharing or able to share a language, sharing or able to share our sentiments, sharing or able to share intellectual, moral and aesthetic standards, and sharing or aspiring to share in the setting of those standards.<a href="#n8">[8]</a><br/></blockquote>
</li>
<li>Baier is convinced by the collaborative tendencies of Hume's model, a view also shared by Sarah A. Bishop Merrill, who focuses on Hume's theory of identity, and claims that it is useful because of the way it foregrounds social interaction.<a href="#n9">[9]</a> The interest which Hume holds for current feminist philosophers helps illuminate the attraction which Humean-derived ideas would have for a woman poet. The legacies of the Humean system&#8212;a more flexible model of the mind, an interrogation into the grounds of identity, and an emphasis on the sociality of the passions&#8212;all find their way into Hemans's poetic.<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>When we turn to evaluate the influence of Hume, it is most relevant to see how his ideas were circulated and interpreted at the time amongst Hemans's contemporaries. The "correct" understanding of Hume is thus less relevant for my purposes than the contemporary misreadings of Hume. Nonetheless, it will be useful here to summarize the key notions in his thought, which are set out in <em>A Treatise of Human Nature</em> (1739-40). According to Hume, there are no innate ideas in the mind; all ideas are derived from impressions, which arise through sense experience. There are certain tendencies regarding how the mind organizes ideas through association&#8212;such as a predilection to perceive causality, and a liking for resemblance and contiguity&#8212;but these tendencies merely have to do with how we organize our ideas and impressions, not with their origin, which is for Hume always sense experience. Hume does not believe that there is any <em>proof</em> for either the notion of the continued existence of objects, or causation. Although he is accepting of the mind's tendency to <em>attribute</em> these relations, he holds that in fact all we have are fleeting perceptions of objects, and they do not exist outside of these sense perceptions. Particularly infamous is the direction Hume's thinking takes when he comes to consider the putative existence of the self. The self turns out to be simply another object, and as is the case with all objects, we can have nothing but fleeting impressions of ourselves: "what we call a <em>mind</em>, is nothing but a heap or collection of different perceptions, united together by certain relations, and suppos'd, tho' falsely, to be endow'd with a perfect simplicity and identity."<a href="#n10">[10]</a> This account of the mind as lacking substantive identity produces profound antireligious consequences.<a href="#n11">[11]</a> This Proteus-like mind, forever eluding self-identity, "is not
subject; it is subjected" as Deleuze will come to claim in his study of Hume, <em>Empiricism and Subjectivity</em>.<a href="#n12">[12]</a><br/>
<br/></li>
<li>It is generally agreed that Hume is actually less of a sceptic than has often been supposed, as he is more concerned to provide a system purged of false rationalism than to reject notions of truth and falsity altogether. Although often quoted as saying that reason is the slave of the passions, the effect of Hume's philosophy was to interrogate the limitations of reason.<a href="#n13">[13]</a> For Hume, it is not so much that objects do not exist outside our perception of them; its just that we have no way of <em>proving</em> that they exist. Moreover, Hume is persistent in acknowledging the human tendency to <em>attribute</em> existence and constancy to objects outside of perception, even though this cannot be proven.<a href="#n14">[14]</a> One useful source for evaluating the response to Hume not only in the early nineteenth century but for the Victorians proper is Leslie Stephen's <em>History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century</em> (1876). Here is Stephens's summary of the nineteenth-century understanding of the Humean system:
<blockquote>The "substance" in which the qualities of the phenomenal world are thought to inhere is a concept emptied of all contents, and a word without a meaning. The external world, which supports the phenomena, is but a "fiction" of the mind; the mind, which in the same way affords a substratum for the impressions, is itself a fiction; and the divine substance, which, according to the Cartesians, causes the correlation between those two fictions, must&#8211;that is the natural inference&#8211;be equally a fiction.<a href="#n15">[15]</a><br/></blockquote>
</li>
<li>This extreme interpretation of Hume, where certainty exists neither in the world nor in the mind, cannot find support in his texts, but it is not difficult to see how his thinking was open to such a misreading. Hume's texts were frequently the object of misrepresentation, primarily for his writings on religion (which I shall address shortly) but also for the particular style of his argumentation, which in its restless questioning could be seen to continually undermine even those premises on which his argument might be seen be based.<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>In any case, the arguments in the <em>Treatise of Human Nature</em> are not that with which he was primarily associated during the nineteenth century, but rather his undermining of religious belief, primarily through his <em>Essay on Miracles</em> (1740-41), now considered a relatively minor chapter in his work.<a href="#n16">[16]</a> The remarks of Leslie Stephen passionately convey the impact of Humean scepticism upon the religious sensibility of the era: "We have in his pages the ultimate expression of the acutist scepticism of the eighteenth century; the one articulate English statement of a philosophical judgment upon the central questions at issue."<a href="#n17">[17]</a> Stephens is apologetic when he comes to focus upon Hume's writings on religion, explaining that "he is known as the author of this particular dilemma; all else that he wrote is ignored."<a href="#n18">[18]</a> Hume sought to bring science to the study of human nature, and as such he demanded empirical evidence to back up what he considered to be the largely groundless speculations of previous philosophy and theology. His <em>Essay on Miracles</em> had become infamous for its attack upon the faith required by Christians; the essay argues that empirical evidence for miracles does not exist, and therefore they cannot be accepted as proven. Any argument for the influence of Humean thinking in the period must take into consideration that he was primarily reviled as a heretical thinker for his writing on religion.<a href="#n19">[19]</a><br/>
<br/></li>
<li>Although it would be reasonable to conclude that Hume's ideas in the Treatise would not have survived these <em>ad hominem</em> attacks, they were in fact kept strongly in circulation through the work of the Scottish Common Sense philosophers&#8211;primarily Thomas Reid, Dugald Stewart, and Thomas Brown&#8211;and this was the route through which Hemans would have been acquainted with his ideas. Although eager to position themselves against what was taken to be a dangerous scepticism, the Common Sense school were all heavily indebted to Hume, and even while opposing themselves to him they were inadvertently continuing his influence. The Common Sense school sought to continue the theory of experience initiated by Hume, while attempting to avoid the dangerous element of scepticism&#8211;injecting "common sense" to fill in those troubling areas of doubt. Hemans was personally acquainted with Stewart and the work of Brown was particularly in vogue during the early 1820s; after his death in 1820, Brown's lectures were published for the first time and were reviewed with much interest in the same periodicals in which Hemans's work was published and reviewed.<a href="#n20">[20]</a> I shall be particularly interested in examining the influence of Brown upon Hemans's thinking in my later discussion of <em>The Forest Sanctuary</em>.<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>In the period prior to 1820, roughly the first half of her career, Hemans's poetic is characterized by historical subjects, particularly deriving from the Mediterranean.<a href="#n21">[21]</a> <em>The Sceptic</em> is pivotal in her career, as it signals a shift from historical themes to philosophical and moral ones, a shift which will culminate in 1825 with <em>The Forest Sanctuary</em>, which although ostensibly a poem with a historical subject takes a philosophical imperative, as it is as much about the process of experience and memory as it is about history proper. We can see Hemans's poetry shot through with the influence of Hume, but also struggling to articulate a distinction which will keep at bay the points of his thinking which undermine religious faith. It is not clear whether Hemans had first-hand knowledge of Hume, but she was certainly exposed to his ideas, through, as I have suggested, the work of Stewart and Brown, with which she was familiar, and more broadly through the discourse of sensibility, so indebted to Humean thought, through which she works. She undertakes a new direction at this point in her career, and she does it through inquiring into many of the philosophical questions in circulation during her day. Her earlier work, although in a classical mode, is infused with the philosophical ideas which created sentimental styles which had gone out of fashion decades before. When she seeks a change of direction, she inquires more deeply into the premises of her language of affect and sensibility. As such, she takes part in the same conversation with Hume as the Common Sense philosophers, in holding on to the model proposed by Hume while infusing it with other elements to renew it as a viable discourse for a Christian culture. It is not entirely coincidental that Hume published an essay also entitled "The Sceptic" (1741-42) although Hemans's poem by the same name makes only glancing reference to it. <a href="#n22">[22]</a><br/>
<br/></li>
<li>In the next section, on <em>The Forest Sanctuary</em>, we will see a direct intertexuality between her writing and that of Hume's inheritors, the Common Sense philosophers. However, I do not want to argue that there is a clear intertextual link between Hume's writings and Hemans's poem, because although studying the two texts alongside one another is suggestive, there is no evidence to suggest that Hemans wrote her poem as a direct rebuttal to Hume. Nevertheless, Hemans's poem does reflect the contemporary circulation of Hume's thought. The poem's overtly moral project was well-received by contemporaries such as Hannah More, and was applauded in notices in the <em>The Quarterly</em> and <em>The Edinburgh Monthly Review</em>, the latter which described the poem as a "moral essay."<a href="#n23">[23]</a> With its moral, didactic subject and marching meter, the poem is quite unlike any other in Hemans's corpus. Chorley calls <em>The Sceptic</em> the only poem "of a purely didactic character, ever written by Mrs Hemans."<a href="#n24">[24]</a> The poem takes on a variety of those false philosophies which divert the Christian from faith and the hope of afterlife, "Luring the wanderer, from the star of faith,/To the deep valley of the shades of death."<a href="#n25">[25]</a> What this scepticism proposes is no point beyond "a dark eternity," and the poem addresses itself to those who have wandered from faith:
<blockquote>Is all so cloudless and so calm below,<br/>
We seek no fairer scenes than life can show?<br/>
That the cold Sceptic, in his pride elate,<br/>
Rejects the promise of a brighter state,<br/>
And leaves the rock, no tempest shall displace,<br/>
To rear his dwelling on the quicksand's base?<br/>
<br/>
Votary of doubt! then join the festal throng,<br/>
Bask in the sunbeam, listen to the song,<br/>
Spread the rich board, and fill the wine-cup high,<br/>
And bind the wreath ere yet the roses die!<br/>
'Tis well, thine eye is yet undimm'd by time,<br/>
And thy heart bounds, exulting in its prime;<br/>
Smile then unmov'd at Wisdom's warning voice,<br/>
And, in the glory of thy strength, rejoice!<br/>
[ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ]<br/>
But thou! whose thoughts have no blest home above,<br/>
Captive of earth! [ . . . ]<br/>
To fix each hope, concentrate every tie,<br/>
On one frail idol,&#8211;destined to die,<br/>
[ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ]<br/>
Then tremble! cling to every passing joy,<br/>
Twin'd with the life a moment may destroy! (23-80)<br/>
(<a href="/editions/sceptic/poem.html#20">Go to <em>The Sceptic</em>, line 23</a>)<br/></blockquote>
</li>
<li>The cold Sceptic in this poem is a figure who has rejected religious belief to focus his attention on earthly pleasure. Byron is the figure most behind her sceptic, but Hume is also a figure sitting behind the "cold Sceptic."<a href="#n26">[26]</a> (<a href="/editions/sceptic/poem.html#25">Go to <em>The Sceptic</em>, line 25</a>) A reviewer in Blackwood's in 1818, in an article which proclaims Hume's inferiority as a philosopher to his contemporary Samuel Johnson, explains how "the coldness of David Hume's character enabled him to shake off all vulgar peculiarities of thought and feeling, and to ascend into the regions of pure and classical intellect. No English writer delivers his remarks with such grace."<a href="#n27">[27]</a><br/>
<br/></li>
<li>Turning to Hume, here I quote at length from the famous conclusion to the first part of the <em>Treatise</em>, the confessional moment of the text, where Hume exposes his self-doubt. The passage is conspicuous in the text, as Hume sets aside his philosophical musings for personal rumination.
<blockquote>Methinks I am like a man, who having struck on many shoals, and having narrowly escap'd ship-wreck in passing a small frith, has yet the temerity to put out to sea in the same leaky weather-beaten vessel, and even carries his ambition so far as to think of compassing the globe under these disadvantageous circumstances. My memory of past errors and perplexities, makes me diffident for the future. The wretched condition, weakness, and disorder of the faculties, I must employ in my enquiries, encrease my apprehensions. And the impossibility of amending or correcting these faculties, reduces me almost to despair, and makes me resolve to perish on the barren rock, on which I am at present, rather than venture myself upon that boundless ocean, which runs out into immensity. This sudden view of my danger strikes me with melancholy; and as 'tis usual for that passion, above all others, to indulge itself; I cannot forbear feeding my despair, with all those desponding reflections, which the present subject furnishes me with in such abundance.<br/>
<br/>
I am first affrighted and confounded with that forelorn solitude, in which I am plac'd in my philosophy, and fancy myself some strange uncouth monster, who not being able to mingle and unite in society, has been expell'd all human commerce, and left utterly abandon'd and disconsolate. [. . .] Every one keeps at a distance, and dreads that storm, which beats upon me from every side.<a href="#n28">[28]</a><br/></blockquote>
</li>
<li>He describes himself as in despair at the immensity of the journey which he has undertaken, shaken by the "disorder of the faculties" upon which he must rely. Hume continues to describe his disillusionment with his philosophical vocation, which leads his brain to become "heated" and to ask of himself such questions as "From what causes do I derive my existence, and to what condition shall I return?" Relief from his despair comes in the form of rest and relaxation:
<blockquote>Most fortunately it happens, that since reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bend of mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of back-gammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hour's amusement, I wou'd return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strain'd, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther.<a href="#n29">[29]</a><br/></blockquote>
</li>
<li>He continues to explain that his disillusionment with philosophy is expelled by the natural inclination he possesses for speculative thought, so that after he has tired of merriment and sociability "I feel my mind all collected within itself, and am naturally <em>inclin'd</em>" to continue his philosophical work.<a href="#n30">[30]</a> Later in the same passage he makes a reference to the superiority of philosophy over religion, saying that "generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous."<a href="#n31">[31]</a> Even without his remarks which clearly reveal his religious disbelief, this could be assumed from his philosophy: he allows no constancy to the self, and so it would be hard to imagine him believing in the immortality of the soul.<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>Hume's passage presents the archetypal attitude of the sceptic, as Hemans phrases it, seeking "no fairer scenes than <em>life</em> can show." In his despair, full of "desponding reflections," Hume describes himself as resolving to "perish on the barren rock" rather than venture out into the "boundless ocean" of his speculations. Hemans describes the sceptic as one who "rejects the promise of a brighter state,/And leaves the rock, no tempest shall displace,/To rear his dwelling on the quicksand's base" (6). (<a href="/editions/sceptic/poem.html#25">Go to <em>The Sceptic</em>, line 27.</a>) Hume begins his passage by likening his state to one who has undertaken a journey on a "leaky weather-beaten vessel" and then describes his lashing from public opinion as "that storm, which beats upon me from every side." Hemans informs the sceptic who is floundering in an ideological tempest that "No strange, unwonted storm there needs,/To wreck at once thy fragile ark of reeds" (10).<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>I will now turn to another instance of parallelism between the two texts. In his essay "The Sceptic," Hume places his own philosophy alongside those philosophers he disputes, pointing out how their root deficiency is to underestimate the diversity and variety of the world and attempt to set down maxims which do not account for this diversity: "They confine too much their principles, and make no account of that vast variety which nature has so much affected in all her operations."<a href="#n32">[32]</a> He promotes an extreme subjectivity, suggesting that things acquire their characteristics through "the particular constitution and fabric of human sentiment and affection" (164). He delineates the operation of passions and affections, and claims that "some passions or inclinations, in the <em>enjoyment</em> of their object, are not so steady or constant as others, nor convey such durable pleasure and satisfaction" (169). The object which religion offers does not rank highly in this schema: "an abstract, invisible object, like that which natural religion alone presents to us, cannot long actuate the mind, or be of any moment in life. To render the passion of continuance, we must find some method of affecting the senses and imagination, and must embrace some historicalas well as philosophical account of the Divinity" (170). In the latter part of his essay, Hume holds up celebrated philosophical aphorisms to critique. One of the aphorisms he disputes&#8211;"<em>All ills arise from the order of the universe, which is absolutely perfect. Would you wish to disturb so divine an order for the sake of your own particular interest?</em>" (176) &#8211;is also present in Hemans's poem:
<blockquote>Oh! vainly reason's scornful voice would prove<br/>
That life hath nought to claim such lingering love,<br/>
And ask, if e'er the captive, half unchain'd,<br/>
Clung to the links which yet his step restrain'd?<br/>
In vain philosophy, with tranquil pride,<br/>
Would mock the feelings she perchance can hide,<br/>
Call up the countless armies of the dead,<br/>
Point to the pathway beaten by their tread,<br/>
And say&#8211;"What wouldst thou? Shall the fix'd decree,<br/>
Made for creation, be revers'd for thee?" (26-27)<br/>
(<a href="/editions/sceptic/poem.html#380">Go to <em>The Sceptic</em>, line 383</a>)<br/></blockquote>
</li>
<li>Despite the fact that Hemans strongly rejects Hume's anti-religious stance, his claims about the importance of "human sentiment and affection" are ideas which the poet shares. In <em>The Forest Sanctuary</em>, an essentially Humean account of the mind and human sympathy are joined within a religious framework.<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>While it is interesting to see how <em>The Sceptic</em> indicates the seriousness of Hemans's critique of Humean attitudes, there is also much to be gained from close attention to reviews of the poem. It is here that we can pinpoint the impetus for the poet's experimentation with dramatic modes in the twenties. Paula R. Feldman has indicated the nature of the relationship between Hemans's literary production and the literary market, and how she skillfully negotiated with her publishers to ensure an income which could support herself and her five sons. This entailed a keen awareness of public interest and a willingness to allow her work to be influenced by the vagaries of public taste. Feldman offers many revealing extracts from Hemans's correspondence with her publishers which indicate how her choice of subject matter and style was often dictated by what she thought would be profitable. In a letter of 1817 to John Murray she tells him that she "shall be much favoured by your suggesting to me any subject, or style of writing, likely to be more popular."<a href="#n33">[33]</a> In another letter of the same year she confesses that "I have now seen how little any work of mere sentiment or description is likely to obtain popularity, and have had warning enough to give up that style of writing altogether."<a href="#n34">[34]</a> With regard to <em>The Sceptic</em>, she writes in 1819 her sense that the poem would be appealing to public taste, saying "it is entirely free from political allusions, and is merely meant as a picture of the dangers resulting to public and private virtue and happiness, from the doctrines of Infidelity."<a href="#n35">[35]</a> Feldman claims that "drama was to be her big money maker, if not her artistic triumph," referring to her tragedy <em>The Vespers of Palermo</em>, first produced in Covent Garden in 1823.<a href="#n36">[36]</a> Edgar presents a slightly
different narrative; he maintains that the move into drama signalled an attempt by Hemans to move into "a predominantly male literary sphere," and that the play's failure led to the subsequent experiment of <em>The Forest Sanctuary</em>, which was so unpopular that Hemans was dropped by her publisher, John Murray.<a href="#n37">[37]</a> There is no doubt, however, that her move into drama shifts the tenor of all of her subsequent work. Drama is her escape route from sentimental narratives and the limitations of expressive theory.<br/>
<br/></li>
<li><em>The Sceptic</em> was reviewed with particular care in <em>The Edinburgh Monthly Review</em>, a commentary which I discussed at the beginning of this section with regard to its gendered discourse of poetic creativity. After the review's glowing praise of the poet's perfect "dignity of womanhood," the review shifts in tenor, advising her to pay more attention to public taste in order to achieve "the influence which she is capable of acquiring over the public mind":
<blockquote>Her productions have been either of too desultory or too reflective a character, to meet the demand which exists for high excitement and sustained emotion. [. . .] For this purpose, some approach at least to a regular story is indispensable&#8211;some development of character, and conflict of passion [. . .] that deeper interest which we take in the actual collision of daring and impassioned characters, than in the mere reflections of the author, however beautiful, eloquent, or ingenious. [. . .] The subject of the poem before us is one of deep and enduring importance; but it is not well adapted to the very highest purpose of poetry. As Mrs Hemans has treated it, we have a fine and eloquent appeal indeed to the noblest feelings of our nature, against that dreary delusion which seeks to crush and extinguish them&#8211;we have much beautiful and impassioned declamation&#8211;a full flow of elegant diction&#8211;and uninterrupted harmony of numbers. A finer subject could not be found for displaying, in the form of an <em>oration</em>, the very highest powers of eloquence; but the most attractive and popular poetry is still something different from eloquence; and a moral essay, we are afraid, however animated and brilliant, will not command the suffrages of those who have been accustomed to the more intense excitement afforded by the popular performances of the day.<a href="#n38">[38]</a><br/></blockquote>
</li>
<li>Although the reviewer applauds Hemans's eloquent treatment of her subject, he advises her to make her poetry more appealing to a public accustomed to dramatic performances. If the first half of Hemans's career is taken up with an interest in historical subject matter, particularly influenced by the Mediterranean, after <em>The Sceptic</em> her interests shift to drama. This is in part a result of her attentiveness to public opinion, which was stressed by the <em>Edinburgh</em> reviewer, but it is also tied in with her philosophical interests. She made two significant attempts at drama in 1823, with <em>The Siege of Valencia</em> and <em>The Vespers of Palermo</em>, with the latter being performed in that same year in Covent Garden, and in Edinburgh the following year, neither with great success.<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>After this, Hemans began to search for a new subject which could take an analytical account of the mind in action; she chooses the drama of the mind rather than "the actual collision of daring and impassioned characters."<a href="#n39">[39]</a> As has been most impressively documented by Ekbert Faas, the new mental science which developed out of eighteenth-century empiricism nurtured the desire to objectify introspection, and there is a clear parallel development in poetic genre.<a href="#n40">[40]</a> Shifts from romantic into Victorian genres show a pervasive tendency to objectify subjective utterance, and this is a useful context for understanding Hemans's generic experimentation with dramatic modes in the 1820's. <em>The Forest Sanctuary</em> is a dramatic poem; it is usually categorized as an extended monodrama, and fits neatly with Alan Sinfield's description of "the dramatic monologue which seeks the reader's sympathetic involvement," of which Southey's Monodramas are a prime example.<a href="#n41">[41]</a> Sinfield explains the connection between sympathy and drama, which we see in Hemans's poetry:
<blockquote>In the eighteenth century sympathetic identification with the emotions of another came to be valued in itself as the foundation of moral sensibility. An influential theory was that man is motivated by feeling rather than reason and hence that consideration for others can derive only from a full imaginative appreciation of the consequences of one's actions for others. With this was associated a greater humanitarian concern for the weak and oppressed. These attitudes stimulated an extension in the use of the dramatic complaint to arouse the reader's sympathetic involvement with a speaker.<a href="#n42">[42]</a><br/></blockquote>
</li>
<li>She began working on <em>The Forest Sanctuary</em> in 1824, and comments from her correspondence from this period shed light on the path her thinking was taking. In 1823, she wrote that "there can be no real grandeur unless mind is made the ruling power, and its ascendancy asserted, even amidst the wildest storms of passion."<a href="#n43">[43]</a> The sentiments and affections which had formed the subtext for her earlier historical works are now perceived as secondary to a more probing enquiry into how the mind gains ascendancy over the onslaught of sensation. In 1824, she wrote regarding a historical narrative she had been reading that "the revolutions in a powerful <em>mind</em>, under circumstances so changeful and extraordinary, would, I think, be more impressive than those of an empire."<a href="#n44">[44]</a><br/>
<br/></li>
<li>This is the subject which she takes for <em>The Forest Sanctuary</em>, an ambitious extended monodrama about the process of the mind in experience and memory. The preface to the poem reads "the following poem is intended to describe the mental conflicts, as well as outward sufferings, of a Spaniard, who, flying from the religious persecutions of his own country in the 16th century, takes refuge with his child in a North American Forest. The story is supposed to be related by himself amidst the wilderness which has afforded him an asylum." Gary Kelly's edition of the poem reveals that in the manuscript of the poem, appended to the last sentence is the phrase "and is intended more as the <i>record of a <em>Mind</em></i>, than as a tale abounding with romantic and extraordinary incident." <a href="#n45">[45]</a> In this it resonates with <em>Alastor</em>, which is described in its preface as being about "one of the most interesting situations of the human mind" (2). In the next section I will discuss the poem in detail, which will further my discussion of the way Hemans adopts Humean thought, moralized through the Common Sense philosophers.</li>
</ol>
<h4>Notes</h4>
<p><br/>
<strong><a name="n1"> </a>1.</strong> There are political ramifications for each of the philosophical positions of empiricism and transcendentalism. Most commonly, we assume that transcendentalism goes along with some form of political conservatism, since it is concerned to define universal notions of the nature of human experience and intuition. Empiricism, because it starts with an equalising blank slate model of the mind and encourages sceptical debates, tends to be associated with more progressive thinkers, like John Stuart Mill. But then political delineations shift considerably, so we can see a socially-progressive thinker like Charles Taylor showing considerable sympathy with transcendental arguments. When we intervene in these positions with gender, however, transcendental arguments come out as in need of considerable revision, for they tend to allow gender to remain unthematised yet a constitutive part of their thought.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n2"> </a>2.</strong> Rev. of <em>The Sceptic</em>, by Felicia Hemans, <em>Edinburgh Monthly Review</em> 16 (April 1820): 374. Hereafter noted in the text parenthetically by page number.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n3"> </a>3.</strong> Chad L. Edgar, <em>The Negotiations of the Romantic Popular Poet: A Comparison of the Careers of Felicia Hemans and Lord Byron</em>, diss., New York U, 1996 (Ann Arbor: UMI, 1996, 9621805), 100. Edgar's work is invaluable for understanding the nature of Hemans's negotiation with the literary marketplace.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n4"> </a>4.</strong> Rev. of <i>Remarks on Scepticism</i>, by Thomas Rennell, <em>Edinburgh Monthly Review</em> 13 (January 1820): 74.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n5"> </a>5.</strong> Battersby, <em>The Phenomenal Woman</em>. Battersby's exploration of a feminist, descriptive metaphysics starts with the question: "could we retain a notion of self-identity if we did not privilege that which is self-contained and self-directed?" (2). Battersby, unlike many post-structuralist feminists, wishes to explore and transform notions of self and identity rather than reject them altogether; her approach is phenomenological, and as such rejects the notion of the self as a thing, but rather sees it as a process: "it is more like an 'event' that is 'born' in the space and time of interactive forces" (8).<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n6"> </a>6.</strong> For an account of Hume which argues against his viability for feminists, see Marcia Lind, "Indians, Savages, Peasants and Women: Hume's Aesthetics," <em>Modern Engendering: Critical Feminist Readings in Modern Western Philosophy</em>, ed. Bat-Ami Bar On (Albany, NY: New York State UP, 1994), 51-67.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n7"> </a>7.</strong> Annette C. Baier, "Hume: The Reflective Women's Epistemologist?," <em>A Mind of One's Own: Feminist Essays on Reason and Objectivity</em>, ed. Louise M. Antony and Charlotte Witt (Boulder, CO: Westview P, 1993), 37.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n8"> </a>8.</strong> Baier, "Hume: The Reflective Women's Epistemologist?" 47.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n9"> </a>9.</strong> Merrill's reading of Hume's theory of personhood concludes that "the knowledge of persons, and their very existence, occurs only pragmatically, through social interaction, the use of language and imaginative projection, and the reflection on common need"; Sarah A. Bishop Merrill, "A Feminist Use for Hume's Moral Ontology," <em>Modern Engendering</em>, ed. Bar On, 78.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n10"> </a>10.</strong> Hume, <em>Treatise of Human Nature</em>, 207.<br/>
|</p>
<p><strong><a name="n11"> </a>11.</strong> Don Garrett, <em>Cognition and Commitment in Hume's Philosophy</em> (New York: Oxford UP, 1997), 164.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n12"> </a>12.</strong> Gilles Deleuze, <em>Empiricism and Subjectivity: An Essay on Hume's Theory of Human Nature</em>, trans. Constantin V. Boundas (1953; New York: Columbia UP, 1991), 31. For an excellent discussion of the problem of identity in Hume, see Garrett, who explains that the Humean account of identity assumes that since human identity is variable there can be no strict sense of identity. What we attribute identity to is the set of relations between perceptions, which are imperfect; Garrett, 163.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n13"> </a>13.</strong> Hume, <em>Treatise of Human Nature,</em> 415. H. O. Mounce gives an excellent summary of the legacy of Hume for the nineteenth century: "He had revealed the bankruptcy of eighteenth-century empiricism. Whether or not he was a sceptic, he had shown that our fundamental beliefs cannot be explained in empiricist terms. Consequently, our ability to know the world through sense experience was no longer seen as the solution to the problem of knowledge. It was itself a problem. The question was: <em>how</em> is it possible to know the world through sense experience? Kant and the Scottish naturalists arrived independently at similar solutions. Sense experience is unintelligible except within categories or forms of belief which in the empiricist sense are a priori. Unless we are already adjusted to know the world, we cannot know it through sense experience. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, this view was dominant both in Britain and on the continent"; H.O. Mounce, <em>Hume's Naturalism</em> (London: Routledge, 1999), 131.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n14"> </a>14.</strong> For Hume's own view on extreme scepticism, from which he differentiates himself, see his comment: "Shou'd it here be ask'd me, whether I sincerely assent to this argument, which I seem to take such pains to inculcate, and whether I be really one of those sceptics, who hold that all is uncertain, and that our judgment is not in any thing possest of <em>any</em> measures of truth and falshood; I shou'd reply, that this question is entirely superfluous, and that neither I, nor any other person was ever sincerely and constantly of that opinion. Nature, by an absolute and uncontroulable necessity has determin'd us to judge as well as to breathe and feel; nor can we any more forbear viewing certain objects in a stronger and fuller light, upon account of their customary connexion with a present impression, than we can hinder ourselves from thinking as long as we are awake, or seeing the surrounding bodies, when we turn our eyes towards them in broad sunshine. Whoever has taken the pains to refute the cavils of this <em>total</em> scepticism, has really disputed without an antagonist, and endeavour'd by arguments to establish a faculty, which nature has antecedently implanted in the mind, and render'd unavoidable." Thus Hume accepts that the mind has innate tendencies, but he seeks to extend the interrogation of these tendencies. Hume, <em>Treatise of Human Nature</em> 183.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n15"> </a>15.</strong> Leslie Stephen, <em>History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century</em>, 3rd ed., vol. I (1876; London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1902), 315.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n16"> </a>16.</strong> David Hume, "Essay on Miracles," <em>Essays: Moral, Political and Literary</em> (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1963), 517-544.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n17"> </a>17.</strong> Stephen, 312.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n18"> </a>18.</strong> Stephen, 310.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n19"> </a>19.</strong> Refutations of Hume's thought produced in the eighteenth century were still in circulation; George Campbell's <em>A Dissertation on Miracles</em> (1762; Edinburgh, 1812) was one of the best known, where he says that "the Essay on Miracles deserves to be considered as one of the most dangerous attacks that have been made on our religion" (v); George Horne claimed, regarding Hume's theories, that "the design of them is to banish out of the world every idea of truth and comfort, salvation and immortality, a future state, and the providence, and even existence of God"; <em>A Letter to Adam Smith on the Life, Death, and Philosophy of his Friend David Hume</em> (1777; London, 1819), 5.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n20"> </a>20.</strong> In particular, see John Wilson, "Professor Brown's Outlines of the Philosophy of the Human Mind," <em>Blackwood's Magazine</em> 37 (April 1820), 62-71.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n21"> </a>21.</strong> See Nanora Sweet, <em>The Bowl of Liberty: Felicia Hemans and the Romantic Mediterranean</em>, diss., U of Michigan, 1994 (Ann Arbor, MI: DAI 1994, 9332173) for a thorough and probing account of the texts and contexts for these early narrative poems.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n22"> </a>22.</strong> David Hume, "The Sceptic," <em>Essays: Moral, Political and Literary</em> (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1963), 161-184.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n23"> </a>23.</strong> Chorley 107; Rev. of <em>The Sceptic</em>, Quarterly Review 24 (Oct 1820): 130-39; Rev. of <em>The Sceptic, Edinburgh Monthly Review</em> 16 (April 1820): 375-378.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n24"> </a>24.</strong> Chorley, 51.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n25"> </a>25.</strong> Felicia Hemans, <em>The Sceptic: A Poem</em> (London, 1820), 6. Hereafter noted in the text parenthetically by page number.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n26"> </a>26.</strong> Nanora Sweet reads <em>The Sceptic</em> as a rejoinder to the religious scepticism of Byron and Shelley; she also suggests that it "interrupts their philosophical debate with ideological dilemmas that are importantly, if not exclusively, experienced by women: intimacy with death and its conduct and enforced deference to the church and enforced deferral of hope to an afterlife"; <em>The Bowl of Liberty</em>, 333. For a detailed reading of the intertextual relationship between Hemans's poem and Byron's <em>Childe Harold's Pilgrimage</em>, as well as useful contextual material on the Cato Street Conspiracy and the Queen Caroline affair, see Derek Lance Furr, <em>Sympathetic Readings: Evaluating English Sentimental Poetry, 1820-1840</em>, diss., U. of Virginia, 1997 (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI, 1997, 9724714), 35-109. Furr shows how Hemans's rejection of scepticism was not only part of an attempt to distinguish herself from Byron, but was also related to the Tory establishment's rebuttal of political radicalism, long associated with religious scepticism.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n27"> </a>27.</strong> William Howison, "Samuel Johnson and David Hume," <em>Blackwood's Magazine</em> 17 (Aug 1818), 512.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n28"> </a>28.</strong> Hume, <em>Treatise of Human Nature,</em> 263-264.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n29"> </a>29.</strong> Hume, <em>Treatise of Human Nature,</em> 269.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n30"> </a>30.</strong> Hume, <em>Treatise of Human Nature</em>, 270.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n31"> </a>31.</strong> Hume, <em>Treatise of Human Nature,</em> 272.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n32"> </a>32.</strong> David Hume, "<em>The Sceptic,</em>" 161. Hereafter noted in the text parenthetically by page number.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n33"> </a>33.</strong> Quoted in Feldman, "The Poet and the Profits," 75.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n34"> </a>34.</strong> Quoted in Feldman, 76.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n35"> </a>35.</strong> Quoted in Feldman, 78.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n36"> </a>36.</strong> Feldman, 78.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n37"> </a>37.</strong> Edgar, 192. Edgar also points out that after <em>The Forest Sanctuary's</em> failure, the value of her lyrics rose, due to the expanding sphere of publishing available to women represented by the annuals and less serious periodicals (228). Edgar claims that this material reality of publishing for poets like Hemans, Landon, and Jewsbury constituted a public realm for exploring female subjectivity, and he suggests that the focus on female subjectivity in <i>Records of Woman</i> was a matter of Hemans "using the increasing availability of public explorations of female subjectivity to understand and interrogate her own subjectivity" (237). For a more detailed version of the story behind Hemans's change of publishers in 1826, see Taylor's unpublished Ph. D. thesis, <i>Felicia Hemans : The Making of a Professional Poet</i>, 96-103.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n38"> </a>38.</strong> Rev. of <em>The Sceptic, Edinburgh Monthly Review</em> 16 (April 1820): 375-78.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n39"> </a>39.</strong> Rev. of <i>The Sceptic</i>, <i>Edinburgh Monthly Review</i> 16 (April 1820), 376.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n40"> </a></strong> <strong>40.</strong> Ekbert Faas, <i>Retreat into the Mind:</i> <em>Victorian Poetry and the Rise of Psychiatry</em> (Princeton UP: Princeton, 1988),14. In the previous chapter, I set out the argument of Charles Taylor regarding what he considers to be the problematic tendency in modern philosophy to give pride of place to the "punctual self"&#8211;a self which can take an objective stance towards itself. Taylor characterizes this paradoxical objectivity which demands a radical subjectivity as deeply flawed. In his more recent <em>Philosophical Arguments</em> (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1995), Taylor explains that this is a problem rooted in the privilege given to epistemology, which has gone hand-in-hand with scientific development, working to substantiate science's claims to knowledge (1). For Taylor, the problem with the emphasis on epistemology is that "it assumes wrongly that we can get to the bottom of what knowledge is, without drawing on our never-fully-articulable understanding of human life and experience" (vii-viii).<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n41"> </a>41.</strong> Alan Sinfield, <em>Dramatic Monologue</em> (London: Methuen, 1977), 45.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n42"> </a>42.</strong> Sinfield, 43-44.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n43"> </a>43.</strong> Letter of Felicia Hemans to unidentified recipient, 14 May 1823, quoted in Chorley 1:93<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n44"> </a>44.</strong> Letter of Felicia Hemans to unidentified recipient, 6 March 1824, quoted in Chorley 1:100-101.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n45"> </a>45.</strong> Hemans, prefatory note, <em>The Forest Sanctuary</em>, Liverpool MS, Liverpool Public Library Record Office. Quoted with permission from Gary Kelly's edition of <em>The Forest Sanctuary</em> in <i>Felicia Hemans: Selected Poems, Prose and Letters</i> (Ontario: Broadview, 2002), 228, note 1.<br/></p>
</body>
</html></div></div></div><section class="field field-name-field-parent-section field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Section:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/node/31535">Electronic Editions</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-resource-index field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Resource:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/editions/sceptic/index.html">The Sceptic; A Poem: A Hemans-Byron Dialogue</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-authored-by-secondary- field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Authored by (Secondary):&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/person/hartman-anne">Hartman, Anne</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/percy-bysshe-shelley-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Percy Bysshe Shelley</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/hume" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Hume</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1531" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Peterloo Massacre</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1759" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">skepticism</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/gibbon" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Gibbon</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/2736" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Quarterly Review</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4706" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Sceptic</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4707" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Manfred</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4708" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Childe Harold&#039;s Pilgrimage</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4709" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">woman poet</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/murray" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Murray</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4711" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">sceptic</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4712" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">skeptic</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4713" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">sceptical</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/title/common-sense" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Common Sense</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4715" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Forest Sanctuary</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4716" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Domestic Affections</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4717" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">poetic femininity</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4718" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">bluestocking</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4719" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">heterodoxy</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4720" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">epideictic</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4721" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">didactic</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/jeffrey-walker" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jeffrey Walker</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/bossuet" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Bossuet</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4724" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">1819</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4725" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">life after death</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-52 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Section:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/section/editions/the-sceptic-a-hemans-byron-dialogue" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Sceptic: A Hemans-Byron Dialogue</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-organization-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Organization:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/organization/university-of-london" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">University of London</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-person-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Person:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/thomas-brown" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Thomas Brown</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/dugald-stewart" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Dugald Stewart</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/chad-l-edgar" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Chad L. Edgar</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/felicia-dorothea-hemans" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Felicia Dorothea Hemans</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-region-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Region:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/region/mediterranean" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Mediterranean</a></li></ul></section>Thu, 23 Feb 2012 13:17:45 +0000rc-admin17296 at http://www.rc.umd.eduThe Edinburgh Monthly Reviewhttp://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/sceptic/edinburghreview.html
<div class="field field-name-field-published field-type-date field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="collex:date" datatype="gYearMonth"><span class="date-display-single" property="collex:date" datatype="gYearMonth" content="2004-01-01T00:00:00-05:00">January 2004</span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><table width="640" cellpadding="5" align="center">
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<h2 align="center"><i>The Edinburgh Monthly Review</i></h2>
<h4 align="center">April, 1820</h4>
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<strong>ART. I. &#8212;<em>The Sceptic; a Poem</em>. By Mrs. HEMANS, author of "The Restoration of Works of Art to Italy;" "Modern Greece;" "Tales and Historic Scenes;" "Wallace's Invocation to Bruce." Murray. Lond. 1820.</strong>
<p>We have, on more than one occasion, expressed the very high opinion which we entertain of the talents of this lady; and it is gratifying to find, that she gives us no reason to retract or modify in any degree the applause already bestowed, and that every fresh exhibition of her powers enhances and confirms her claims upon our admiration. Mrs. Hemans is indeed but in the infancy of her poetical career, but it is an infancy of unrivalled beauty and of very high promise. Not but that she has already performed more than has often been sufficient to win for other candidates no mean place in the roll of fame, but because what she has already done shrinks, when compared with what we consider to be her own great capacity; to mere incipient excellence&#8212;the intimation rather than the fulfilment of the high destiny of her genius.</p>
<p>We are aware, indeed, that this singular and gifted woman has not in every instance obtained that full share of celebrity, to which her merits so justly entitle her, and that, in speaking of her in the terms which we have been accustomed to use, we may appear to many readers to have been guilty of a deviation from the hackneyed usages of criticism, by bowing to an idol not yet recognized by the throng. It is true that Mrs. Hemans stands yet trembling on the threshold of fame, and that many of the veteran watchmen of the temple, instead of aiding the youthful and interesting votary, have left her to unbar the portals in the energy of her own strength alone, and looked with cold and stupid indifference upon her generous struggle. There might be some apology for this, were the neglect impartial, and had no undue facilities been accorded to those who have already found their way into the sanctuary, who occupy its chief places, and attract the admiring gaze of the multitude. But when we remember what motives of fear and favour have visibly operated upon the ephemeral distributors of fame,&#8212;with what increased alacrity their more generous and perhaps least grateful functions have been performed in the case of a personal friend or noted partizan&#8212;with what bustling and tremulous haste the experience, or the apprehension of a vigorous lampoon has summoned them to the aid even of a hostile bard&#8212;when we consider all these things, and think at once of the merit and the modesty of Mrs. Hemans, for whose gentle hands the auxiliary club of political warfare, and the sharp lash of personal satire are equally unsuited, we cannot but enter a complaint in her name, which she would not deign to make for herself, and appeal for her from the apathy of the superannuated tribunals to the living energy of general feeling upon which she may cast herself with full reliance, that her poetry requires only to be brought into contact with it, to kindle and exalt it into
enthusiastic admiration.</p>
<p><a name="ed1"> </a>The verses of Mrs. Hemans appear the spontaneous offspring of intense and noble feeling, governed by a clear understanding, and fashioned into elegance by an exquisite delicacy and precision of taste. With more than the force of many of her masculine competitors, she never ceases to be strictly <em>feminine</em> in the whole current of her thought and feeling, nor approaches by any chance, the verge of that free and intrepid course of speculation, of which the boldness is more conspicuous than the wisdom, but into which some of the most remarkable among the female literati of our times have freely and fearlessly plunged. She has, in the poem before us, made choice of a subject of which it would have been very difficult to have reconciled the treatment, in the hands of <em>some</em> female authors, to the delicacy which belongs to the sex, and the tenderness and enthusiasm which form its finest characteristic. A coarse and chilling cento of the exploded fancies of modern scepticism, done into rhyme by the hand of a woman, would have been doubly disgusting by the revival of absurdities long consigned to oblivion, and by the revolting exhibition of a female mind, shorn of all its attractions, and wrapt in darkness and defiance. But Mrs. Hemans has chosen the better and the nobler cause, and while she has left in the poem before us every trace of vigorous intellect of which the subject admitted, and has far transcended in energy of thought the prosing pioneers of unbelief; she has sustained throughout a tone of warm and confiding piety, and has thus proved that the humility of hope and of faith has in it none of the weakness with which it has been charged by the arrogance of impiety, but owns a divine and mysterious vigour residing under the very aspect of gentleness and devotion.</p>
<p>Nothing surely can be more beautiful and attractive than such a character as this,&#8212;richly endowed with every gift which is calculated to win regard or to command esteem, yet despising all false brilliancy, and keeping every talent in sweet and modest subordination to the dignity of womanhood,&#8212;emulating the other sex in the graceful vigour of genius, but scrupulously abstaining from all that may betray unfeminine temerity or coarseness in its exhibitions,&#8212;touching the dark regions of metaphysical debate, and striking upon them as with a sunbeam from her own pure and spotless spirit, and thus reinforcing the sterner champions of her country's faith with the charm of gentle but glowing sentiment, and the resistless appeal of the most impressive eloquence. It is here that we recognise the graceful and appropriate direction of the female intellect, and not in that sneering scepticism which in man is offensive&#8212;in woman, monstrous and revolting.</p>
<p>Mrs. Hemans, although she does not disown the touching and solemn influences of religion, is no devotee or ascetic, but has a mind profoundly alive to all that is beautiful or sublime in the creations of genius or in the fortunes of mankind. She has already hailed with fine and deep enthusiasm the rescuer of the immortal monuments of Italian art from the den of Gallic plunder; she has mourned over the desolation of Greece in strains that might sooth the spirit of its departed greatness; and she has embalmed the unpolished magnanimity of Caledonian patriotism in a rich glow of fond and admiring sympathy. Her piety is but the perfection of that lofty spirit which, with its deep sensibility to worldly and derivative grandeur, can never forget the great eternal cause of all that is beautiful or sublime in the aspect of matter or the workings of mind,&#8212;and is the surest pledge of the presence of that poetic genius which strikes deep its roots in the sympathies and aspirations of our common nature.</p>
<p>It must be owned, however that Mrs. Hemans has hitherto scarcely done full justice to her powers, nor made a fair experiment of the influence which she is capable of acquiring over the public mind. Her productions have been either of too desultory or too reflective a character, to meet the demand which exists for high excitement and sustained emotion. Beautiful as was her first poem on the Restoration of the Works of Art to Italy, and fine and classical as were the whole tissue and form of its composition, it was not precisely of that class which is fitted, at the present day, to make a profound impression on the public mind, or to lay the foundation of great and enduring fame to the author. For this purpose, some approach at least to a regular story is indispensible&#8212;some development of character, and conflict of passion. The reason why poetry of this kind is, generally speaking, more attractive than any other cannot be mistaken; and it is far from our purpose to enter into a tedious dissertation to discover the source of that deeper interest which we take in the actual collision of daring and impassioned characters, than in the mere reflections of the author, however beautiful, eloquent, or ingenious. The solution of the problem, indeed, lies on the very surface of speculation. The power of that species of poetry to which we allude is now greatly increased also, at least in extent of operation, by the admission among the number of judges, of so great a mass of half-educated persons, to whom the <em>story</em> is every thing, and the poetry almost nothing. Nor must we omit to mention among the disadvantages with which Mrs. Hemans has had to contend, <em>in the form</em> at least in which she has hitherto chosen to represent herself to the public, the <em>practice</em> of all the most popular living poets, who have by their example rendered a story almost essential to great popularity and success, and who would have been little heard of or known, had they
trusted their fame to such casual efforts as those to which Mrs. Hemans has, generally speaking, hitherto confined herself.</p>
<p>But it will become her now to change her course, and to try a more expanded and adventurous flight. After the successful experiment of her powers within the limits to which she has hitherto circumscribed them, she may now collect herself for a more continuous effort, and, braving all their vicissitudes, wing her way through the lofty and troubled regions of passion. There is more than she is probably aware of in the happy selection of a subject. If the subject owe its embellishment to the author, he also has his obligations to his subject, for it becomes in some degree the base upon which his reputation is poised. The highest efforts of genius may be expended on some obscure and barren theme, and nothing remain of the laborious fabric except the memory of the author's imprudence, and the regret of his miscarriage, while far humbler powers, directed with a lucky precision to the springs of emotion and sentiment, shall achieve the prize, and float triumphant on the tide of popularity. The streams of Castalia may be lavished on the desart, only to be absorbed and lost for ever. The subject, in fact, must co-operate with the author in his ascent to the pinnacle of fame, and must place him at starting upon vantage ground, and not chain him down to the dark and hollow places of the earth, from which no mortal energy will serve for his extrication.</p>
<p>Some indeed there have been of surpassing intellect and genius, who have chosen to waste their talents on airy nothings, or on the gross and perishable materials presented by the fashion of their own times; or who have boldly essayed, not merely the work of poetical, but of moral <em>creation</em>, by endeavouring to recast the whole habitudes and sympathies of our nature. But where are now the greatest of such writers who have flourished in past times? Their names, perhaps, are remembered in the cold and distant admiration of the more curious lovers of poetry, but their works are unknown to all perusal, and strangers to every heart. We are as far as possible from insinuating that Mrs. Hemans belongs to either of the classes we have mentioned; but we wish, by these imperfect illustrations, to impress upon her a truth deeply interesting to her future celebrity, and to which she seems not hitherto to have been sufficiently alive&#8212;that the choice of a subject of commanding interest is essential to the full development of her powers, and the maturity of that reputation which we think she is yet destined to attain. It is not for one so gifted as she appears to us to be, to scatter the sweets of her genius upon any subject of ambiguous adaptation to the purposes of her art, or to neutralize, by dividing, the energy of her mind among the more minute and fugitive compartments of poetical interest, but, giving a fair chance to her talents, by their scrupulous and undeviating concentration to one great aim,&#8212;putting from her with scorn all ephemeral solicitation, and deaf to every whisper of fleeting and momentary interest, we yet expect to see her rise triumphant over all prejudice or neglect, and command from the elevation which belongs to her genius, the deep and willing homage of her country.</p>
<p>One thing only we would remark about the style and manner of Mrs. Hemans, before proceeding to give the copious extracts which we intend to make from the fine poem before us. The sensibility of her taste, joined to her innate modesty, has deeply impressed upon her mind, the beautiful colours of style and expression with which some of the great masters of English poetry have been accustomed to invest their thoughts, and led her occasionally and unconsciously into an external resemblance of their manner. This, when it <em>does</em> occur, is, as we have just said, the obvious result of her fine taste, and her unnecessary diffidence of her own powers. She has long been in reverential communion with the spirits of these great authors and it is no wonder that she comes forth redolent in some degree of the grace and dignity which characterize their deportment. We should like to see more of this in the present day--for the restoration of the classical <em>costume</em>, if not accomplished in a spirit of servility, but under a sense of its elegance and adaptation to the wearer, would be a sure symptom of a generally returning gracefulness and vigour. Every pretender can advance in his own strange and harlequin garment, and claim the praise of a revolting originality; but there are few who can bear the tightened cincture, or manage the graceful drapery of Dryden and Pope. It is not the least praise of the <em>style</em> of the author before us, that, with her modest and occasional approximations to the manner of these great masters, she has discovered at the same time a capacity of invention and fertility of genius, which must for ever secure her against the reproach of any servile imitation of them; and shews that, if a lively relish for what is powerful and elegant in composition has led her into a casual resemblance of her models, she has the power also of extending their appropriate range of excellence without departing from its characteristic principles, or most
graceful and attractive peculiarities.</p>
<p>The subject of the poem before us is one of deep and enduring importance; but it is not well adapted to the very highest purposes of poetry. As Mrs. Hemans has treated it, we have a fine and eloquent appeal indeed to the noblest feelings of our nature, against that dreary delusion which seeks to crush and extinguish them&#8212;we have much beautiful and impassioned declamation&#8212;a full flow of elegant diction&#8212;and uninterrupted harmony of numbers. A finer subject could not be found for displaying, in the form of an <em>oration</em>, the very highest powers of eloquence; but the most attractive and popular poetry is still something different from eloquence; and a moral essay, we are afraid, however animated and brilliant, will not command the suffrages of those who have been accustomed to the more intense excitement afforded by the popular performances of the day. We shall not revert to this subject however, but proceed to give our promised extracts. The opening of the poem is at once brilliant and powerful.</p>
<blockquote>WHEN the young Eagle, with exulting eye,<br/>
Has learn'd to dare the splendor of the sky,<br/>
And leave the Alps beneath him in his course,<br/>
To bathe his crest in morn's empyreal source,<br/>
Will his free wing, from that majestic height,<br/>
Descend to follow some wild meteor's light,<br/>
Which far below, with evanescent fire,<br/>
Shines to delude, and dazzles to expire?<br/>
No! still thro' clouds he wins his upward way<br/>
And proudly claims his heritage of day!<br/>
&#8212;And shall the spirit, on whose ardent gaze,<br/>
The day-spring from on high hath pour d its blaze,<br/>
Turn from that pure effulgence, to the beam<br/>
Of earth-born light, that sheds a treacherous gleam,<br/>
Luring the wanderer, from the star of faith,<br/>
To the deep valley of the shades of death?<br/>
What bright exchange, what treasure shall be given,<br/>
For the high birth-right of its hope in Heaven?<br/>
If lost the gem which empires could riot not buy,<br/>
Yet remains ?&#8212;a dark eternity!<br/>
Pp. 5,6.</blockquote>
<p>After sending the Sceptic whose thoughts travel not beyond this chequered state of existence, to the full indulgence of its fleeting and perishable pleasures, she reminds him that " life hath sterner tasks," and then addresses him in these striking and impressive lines:</p>
<blockquote>When years, with silent might, thy frame have bow'd,<br/>
And o'er thy spirit cast their wintry cloud,<br/>
Will Memory soothe thee on thy bed of pain,<br/>
With the bright images of pleasure's train ?<br/>
Yes ! as the sight of some far distant shore,<br/>
Whose well-known scenes his foot shall tread no more,<br/>
Would cheer the seaman, by the eddying wave<br/>
Drawn, vainly struggling, to the unfathom'd grave!<br/>
Shall Hope, the faithful cherub, hear thy call,<br/>
She, who, like heaven's own sun-beam, smiles for all?<br/>
Will she speak comfort?&#8212;Thou hast shorn her plume,<br/>
That might have raised thee far above the tomb,<br/>
And hush'd the only voice whose angel tone<br/>
Soothes when all melodies of joy are flown!<br/>
For she was born beyond the stars to soar,<br/>
And kindling at the source of life, adore;<br/>
Thou could'st not, mortal! rivet to the earth<br/>
Her eye, whose beam is of celestial birth;<br/>
She dwells with those who leave her pinion free,<br/>
And sheds the dews of heaven on all but thee<br/>
Pp.7,8</blockquote>
<p>The wretched and forlorn condition of the Sceptic, when the ties of love or friendship are snapped asunder by death, is thus powerfully depicted:</p>
<blockquote>Yet few there are, so lonely, so bereft,<br/>
But some true heart, that beats to theirs, is left,<br/>
And, haply, one whose strong affection's power,<br/>
Unchanged may triumph through misfortune's hour,<br/>
Still with fond care supports thy languid head,<br/>
And keeps unwearied vigils by thy bed.<br/>
But thou! whose thoughts have no blest home above;<br/>
Captive of earth! and canst thou dare to <em>love</em>?<br/>
To nurse such feelings as delight to rest,<br/>
Within that hallow'd shrine&#8212;a parent's breast,<br/>
To fix each hope, concentrate every tie,<br/>
On one frail idol,&#8212;destined but to die,<br/>
Yet mock the faith that points to worlds of light,<br/>
Where sever'd souls, made perfect, re-unite.<br/>
Then tremble! cling to every passing joy,<br/>
Twin'd with the life a moment may destroy<br/>
If there be sorrow in a parting tear,<br/>
Still let "<em>for ever</em>" vibrate on thine ear!<br/>
If some bright hour on rapture's wing hath flown,<br/>
Find more than anguish in the thought&#8212;'tis gone!<br/>
Go! to a voice such magic influence give,<br/>
Thou canst not lose its melody, and live;<br/>
And make an eye the lode star of thy soul,<br/>
And let a glance the springs of thought controul;<br/>
Gaze on a mortal form with fond delight,<br/>
Till the fair vision mingles with thy sight;<br/>
There seek thy blessings, there repose thy trust,<br/>
Lean on the willow, idolize the dust<br/>
Then, when thy treasure best repays thy care,<br/>
Think on that dread "<em>for ever</em>"&#8212;and despair!<br/>
Pp. 8-10</blockquote>
<p>The agony of soul produced by the first transition from intellectual darkness to the light of truth, is thus finely illustrated:</p>
<blockquote>&#8212;He, who hath pin'd in dungeons, midst the shade<br/>
Of such deep night as man for man hath made,<br/>
Through lingering years; if call'd at length to be,<br/>
Once more, by nature's boundless charter, free,<br/>
Shrinks feebly back, the blaze of noon to shun,<br/>
Fainting at day, and blasted by the sun!<br/>
Thus, when the captive soul hath long remained<br/>
In its own dread abyss of darkness chained,<br/>
If the Deliverer, in his might, at last,<br/>
Its fetters, born of earth, to earth should cast,<br/>
The beam of truth o'erpowers its dazzled sight,<br/>
Trembling it sinks, and finds no joy in light.<br/>
But this will pass away&#8212;that spark of mind,<br/>
Within thy frame unquenchably enshrin'd,<br/>
Shall live to triumph in its brightening ray,<br/>
Born to be fostered with etherial day.<br/>
Then wilt thou bless the hour, when o'er thee pass'd,<br/>
On wing of flame, the purifying blast,<br/>
And sorrow's voice, through paths before untrod,<br/>
Like Sinai's trumpet, call'd thee to thy God!<br/>
Pp 14,15</blockquote>
<p>Then follows this powerful passage:</p>
<blockquote>Oh! what is nature's strength? the vacant eye,<br/>
By mind deserted, hath a dread reply!<br/>
The wild delirious laughter of despair,<br/>
The mirth of frenzy&#8212;seek an answer there!<br/>
Turn not away, though pity's cheek grow pale,<br/>
Close not thine ear against their awful tale.<br/>
They tell thee, reason, wandering from the ray<br/>
Of Faith, the blazing pillar of her way,<br/>
In the mid-darkness of the stormy wave,<br/>
Forsook the struggling soul she could not save!<br/>
Weep not, sad moralist! o'er desert plains,<br/>
Strew'd with the wrecks of grandeur-mouldering fanes,<br/>
Arches of triumph, long with weeds o'ergrown,<br/>
And regal cities, now the serpent's own<br/>
Earth has more awful ruins&#8212;one lost mind,<br/>
Whose star is quench'd, hath lessons for mankind,<br/>
Of deeper import than each prostrate dome,<br/>
Mingling its marble with the dust of Rome.<br/>
But who with eye unshrinking shall explore<br/>
That waste, illumn' d by reason's beam so more?<br/>
Who pierce the deep, mysterious clouds that roll<br/>
Around the shatter'd temple of the soul,<br/>
Curtain'd with midnight?&#8212;low its columns lie,<br/>
And dark the chambers of its imag'ry,<br/>
Sunk are its idols now&#8212;and God alone<br/>
May rear the fabric, by their fall o'erthrown!<br/>
Yet, from its inmost shrine, by storms laid bare,<br/>
Is heard an oracle that cries&#8212;, Beware!<br/>
Child of the dust! but ransom'd of the skies!<br/>
One breath of Heaven&#8212;and thus thy glory dies<br/>
Haste, ere the hour of doom, draw nigh to Him<br/>
Who dwells above between the cherubim!<br/>
Pp. 16-18.</blockquote>
<p>The energy of the following pious supplication has seldom been surpassed:</p>
<blockquote>Oh ! by <em>His</em> love, who, veiling Godhead's light,<br/>
To moments circumscrib'd the Infinite,<br/>
And heaven and earth disdain'd not to allay<br/>
By that dread union&#8212;Man with Deity;<br/>
Immortal tears o'er mortal woes who shed,<br/>
And, ere he rais'd them, wept above the dead;<br/>
Save, or we perish!&#8212;let Thy word controul<br/>
The earthquakes of that universe&#8212;the soul;<br/>
Pervade the depths of passion&#8212;speak once more<br/>
The mighty mandate, guard of every shore,<br/>
"Here shall thy waves be staid"&#8212;in grief, in pain,<br/>
The fearful poise of reason's sphere maintain,<br/>
Thou, by whom suns are balanc'd !&#8212;thus secure<br/>
In thee shall Faith and Fortitude endure;<br/>
Conscious of Thee, unfaltering shall the just<br/>
Look upward still, in high and holy trust,<br/>
And, by affliction guided to Thy shrine,<br/>
The first, last thought of suffering hearts be Thine.<br/>
And oh ! be near, when, cloth'd with conquering power<br/>
The King of Terrors claims his own dread hour<br/>
When, on the edge of that unknown abyss,<br/>
Which darkly parts us from the realm of bliss,<br/>
Awe-struck alike the timid and the brave,<br/>
Alike subdued the monarch and the slave,<br/>
Must drink the cup of trembling&#8212;when we see<br/>
Nought in the universe but death and Thee,<br/>
Forsake us not;&#8212;if still, when life was young,<br/>
Faith to Thy bosom, as her home, hath sprung,<br/>
If Hope's retreat hath&#8212;been, through all the past,<br/>
The shadow by the Rock of Ages cast,<br/>
Father forsake us not !&#8212;when tortures urge<br/>
The shrinking soul to that mysterious verge.<br/>
When from Thy justice to Thy love we fly,<br/>
On nature's conflict look with pitying eye,<br/>
Bid the strong wind, the fire, the earthquake cease,<br/>
Come in the still small voice, and whisper&#8212;peace!<br/>
Pp. 22-24.</blockquote>
<p>In the midst of an eloquent and impassioned remonstrance with the Sceptic who, even when overwhelmed by the disasters of a present world, renounces all trust in futurity, she weaves some touching reflections upon a catastrophe, the remembrance of which will ever fall with surpassing sadness upon the spirit of a great people.</p>
<blockquote>And say, cold Sophist! if by thee bereft<br/>
Of that high hope, to misery what were left?<br/>
But for the vision of the days to be,<br/>
But for the Comforter, despis'd by thee,<br/>
Should we not wither at the Chastener's look,<br/>
Should we not sink beneath our God's rebuke,<br/>
When o'er our heads the desolating blast,<br/>
Fraught with inscrutable decrees, hath pass'd,<br/>
And the stern power who seeks the noblest prey,<br/>
Hath call'd our fairest and our best away?<br/>
Should we not madden, when our eyes behold<br/>
All that we lov'd in marble stillness cold,<br/>
No more responsive to our smile or sigh,<br/>
Fix'd&#8212;frozen&#8212;silent&#8212;all mortality?<br/>
But for the promise, all shall yet be well,<br/>
Would not the spirit in its pangs rebel,<br/>
Beneath such clouds as darkend, when the hand<br/>
Of wrath lay heavy on our prostrate land,<br/>
And Thou, just lent thy gladden'd isles to bless,<br/>
Then snatch'd from earth with all thy loveliness,<br/>
With all a nation's blessings on thy head,<br/>
O England's flower! wert gathered to the dead?<br/>
But Thou didst teach us. Thou to every heart,<br/>
Faith's lofty lesson didst thyself impart!<br/>
When fled the hope through all thy pangs which smil'd,<br/>
When thy young bosom, o'er thy lifeless child,<br/>
Yearn'd with vain longing&#8212;still thy patient eye,<br/>
To its last light, beam'd holy constancy!<br/>
Torn from a lot in cloudless sunshine cast,<br/>
Amidst those agonies&#8212;thy first and last,<br/>
Thy pale lip, quivering with convulsive throes,<br/>
Breath'd not a plaint&#8212;and settled in repose;<br/>
While bow'd thy royal head to Him, whose power<br/>
Spoke in the fiat of that midnight hour,<br/>
Who from the brightest vision of a throne,<br/>
Love, glory, empire, claim'd thee for his own,<br/>
And spread such terror o'er the sea-girt coast,<br/>
As blasted Israel, when her ark was lost!<br/>
"It is the will of God!"&#8212;yet, yet we hear<br/>
The words which clos'd thy beautiful career,<br/>
Yet should we mourn thee in thy blest abode,<br/>
But for that thought&#8212; It is the will of God!"<br/>
Who shall arraign th' Eternal's dark decree,<br/>
If not one murmur then escap'd from thee?<br/>
Oh ! still tho' vanishing without a trace,<br/>
Thou hast not left one scion of thy race,<br/>
Still may thy memory bloom our vales among,<br/>
Hallow'd by freedom, and enshrin'd in song !<br/>
Still may thy pure, majestic spirit dwell,<br/>
Bright on the isles which lov'd thy name so well,<br/>
E'en as an angel, with presiding care,<br/>
To wake and guard thine own high virtues there.<br/>
Pp. 30-33.</blockquote>
<p>These passages must, we think, convey to every reader a very favourable impression of the talents of their author, and of the admirable purposes to which her high gifts are directed. It is the great defect, as we imagine, of some of the most popular writers of the day, that they are not sufficiently attentive to the moral dignity of their performances&#8212;it is the deep, and will be the lasting reproach of others, that in this point of view they have wantonly sought and realized the most profound literary debasement. With the promise of talents not inferior to any, and far superior to most of them, the author before us is not only free from every stain, but breathes all moral beauty and loveliness; and it will be a memorable coincidence, if the era of a woman's sway in literature shall become coeval with the return of its moral purity and elevation.<br/>
<br/></p>
</td>
</tr>
</table></div></div></div><section class="field field-name-field-parent-section field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Section:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/node/31535">Electronic Editions</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-resource-index field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Resource:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/editions/sceptic/index.html">The Sceptic; A Poem: A Hemans-Byron Dialogue</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/percy-bysshe-shelley-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Percy Bysshe Shelley</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/hume" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Hume</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1531" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Peterloo Massacre</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1759" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">skepticism</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/gibbon" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Gibbon</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/2736" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Quarterly Review</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4706" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Sceptic</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4707" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Manfred</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4708" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Childe Harold&#039;s Pilgrimage</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4709" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">woman poet</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/murray" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Murray</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4711" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">sceptic</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4712" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">skeptic</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4713" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">sceptical</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/title/common-sense" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Common Sense</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4715" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Forest Sanctuary</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4716" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Domestic Affections</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4717" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">poetic femininity</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4718" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">bluestocking</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4719" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">heterodoxy</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4720" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">epideictic</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4721" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">didactic</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/jeffrey-walker" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jeffrey Walker</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/bossuet" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Bossuet</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4724" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">1819</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4725" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">life after death</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-52 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Section:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/section/editions/the-sceptic-a-hemans-byron-dialogue" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Sceptic: A Hemans-Byron Dialogue</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-city-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">City:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/city/edinburgh" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Edinburgh</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-country-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Country:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/country/italy" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Italy</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/country/greece" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Greece</a></li></ul></section>Thu, 23 Feb 2012 13:15:30 +0000rc-admin17276 at http://www.rc.umd.edu"A darkling plain": Hemans, Byron and The Sceptic; A Poemhttp://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/sceptic/darklingplain.html
<div class="field field-name-field-published field-type-date field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="collex:date" datatype="gYearMonth"><span class="date-display-single" property="collex:date" datatype="gYearMonth" content="2004-01-01T00:00:00-05:00">January 2004</span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><!DOCTYPE html SYSTEM "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
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<h2>"A darkling plain": Hemans, Byron and <i>The Sceptic; A Poem</i></h2>
<p class="title2">Nanora Sweet</p>
<ol>
<li>In her 1820 pamphlet poem, <em>The Sceptic</em>, twenty-six-year-old Felicia Hemans attacked Lord Byron's scepticism about the afterlife on the grounds that as a posture, it was dishonest, and as a program, it added darkness to a world already sufficiently dark. For her pains, she was welcomed by John Taylor Coleridge in the <em>Quarterly Review</em> as an alternative to "the most dangerous writer of the present day," while herself remaining "always pure in thought and expression, cheerful, affectionate, and pious."<a href="#n1">[1]</a> Her "dangerous" opponent went unnamed in both poem and review, but Byron's biography and poetry were recognizable in her text. In a June 1820 letter to John Murray, Hemans's publisher as well as his own, Byron responded this way to <em>The Sceptic</em>: "Mrs. Hemans is a poet also&#8211;but too stilted, &amp; apostrophic&#8211;&amp; quite wrong. Men died calmly before the Christian era, and since, without Christianity."<a href="#n2">[2]</a> (<a href="/editions/sceptic/byronsletters.html">Read Byron's Letter</a>)<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>As a study of Byron, Hemans, and scepticism, this hypertext aims to lay bare the controversial and intellectual context of their debate. It aims also to illuminate <em>The Sceptic</em> as a poem ("<em>A Poem</em>"), for it was (and in many ways remains) an Arnoldian "darkling plain" where Hemans and Byron did battle over doubt and faith early in the nineteenth century and in poetries which may never again be equaled in material success or artistic ambition.<a href="#n3">[3]</a> A polemic that modulates even as it daunts, <em>The Sceptic</em> has remained neglected among Hemans's poems until very recently, even as her lyrics, progress poems, dramas, and tales receive new attention. Yet in 1984 one of the poet's most astute readers, Peter Trinder, pronounced it "a remarkable poem in its subject and its performance."<a href="#n4">[4]</a><br/>
<br/></li>
<li>We assemble this Hemans-Byron hypertext in the belief that a Hemans without <em>The Sceptic</em> is an ambitious woman poet defanged, and a Byron without <em>The Sceptic</em> is a privileged poet going unanswered by the sex to whom he is purportedly the "most dangerous." <em>The Sceptic</em> serves to anchor this "intertext" including Byron's <em>Childe Harold's Pilgrimage</em> and <em>Manfred</em>, Hemans's "The Domestic Affections" and <em>Tales</em>, <i>and Historic Scenes</i>, and much more. Taken together, contributors to the hypertext suggest that Hemans and Byron contest much the same poetical-polemical territory in history, science, philosophy, and theology. Some of us even propose that these poets reverse roles as sceptics and believers. I argue here that Hemans matched Byron with a scepticism of her own, one befitting a poet who wielded the Sophists' own rhetoric of epideictic and enthymeme.
<h4><br/><br/>Felicia Hemans and Lord Byron</h4>
</li>
<li>As the two most published poets female and male of Britain's nineteenth century, Hemans and Byron belong in the same critical conversation.<a href="#n5">[5]</a> Aware of each other as competitors, acting as mutual provocateurs, they shared subject, style, and audience during the poetry "boom" of the late- and post-Napoleonic eras. Both were teenage prodigies in this environment, meeting adversity at the hands of critics and reaching for maturity in the lofty idioms of Pope and Milton, which somehow they made into spectacularly successful poetries of their own.<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>On Hemans's side, the evidence of relationship is anecdotal, documentary, and literary. On hearing the news of his mother's prize from the Royal Society of Literature (for <em>Dartmoor</em>), Arthur Hemans crowed, "Now, I am sure Mama is a better poet than Lord Byron!" The poet's memoirist (and sister) claims, unconvincingly, that this sentiment did not originate with the adults of the family.<a href="#n6">[6]</a> Hemans was known to wear a lock of Byron's hair and to request his chosen epitaph <em>Implora pace</em> for her own. She drew on him for epigraphs more frequently than any other writer. Still, her <em>Modern Greece</em> (1817) opposed him on the Elgin marbles, and however obliquely, she attacked him and his fellow Promethean Percy Shelley in <em>The Sceptic</em> (1820) and <em>Dartmoor</em> (1821).<a href="#n7">[7]</a> When Thomas Moore's moderately scandalous <em>Letters and Journals of Lord Byron: With Notices of His Life</em> appeared in 1830, Hemans distanced herself from the noble poet and wrote approvingly of Wordsworth instead. Yet she never expunged Byronic resonance from her text or, as criticism shows, deleted it from her textual practice.<a href="#n8">[8]</a><br/>
<br/></li>
<li>On Hemans's side, the evidence of relationship is anecdotal, documentary, and literary. On hearing the news of his mother's prize from the Royal Society of Literature (for <em>Dartmoor</em>), Arthur Hemans crowed, "Now, I am sure Mama is a better poet than Lord Byron!" The poet's memoirist (and sister) claims, unconvincingly, that this sentiment did not originate with the adults of the family.<a href="#n6">[6]</a> Hemans was known to wear a lock of Byron's hair and to request his chosen epitaph <em>Implora pace</em> for her own. She drew on him for epigraphs more frequently than any other writer. Still, her <em>Modern Greece</em> (1817) opposed him on the Elgin marbles, and however obliquely, she attacked him and his fellow Promethean Percy Shelley in <em>The Sceptic</em> (1820) and <em>Dartmoor</em> (1821).<a href="#n7">[7]</a> When Thomas Moore's moderately scandalous <em>Letters and Journals of Lord Byron: With Notices of His Life</em> appeared in 1830, Hemans distanced herself from the noble poet and wrote approvingly of Wordsworth instead. Yet she never expunged Byronic resonance from her text or, as criticism shows, deleted it from her textual practice.<a href="#n8">[8]</a><br/>
<br/></li>
<li>On Byron's side is the evidence of letters and poems.<a href="#n9">[9]</a> He praised Hemans's <em>The Restoration of the Works of Art to Italy</em> (1816) as "a good poem&#8212;very." In form, the Italian canto of his <em>Childe Harold's Pilgrimage</em> (1818) is a progress poem like her <i>Restoration</i>, one featuring Italian art work and a sequence of female prosopopoeias. After Hemans opposed him in <em>Modern Greece</em> (published anonymously but soon identified as hers) and attacked him in <em>The Sceptic</em>, Byron distanced himself from her (7 June 1820). In one breath, he disputed her convictions about the afterlife and decried the "apostrophic" style that, now authoring <em>Don Juan</em>, he believed he no longer shared with her. In letters to their mutual publisher Murray, Byron satirized Hemans as a "feminine He-man" and "Mrs. Hewoman."<a href="#n10">[10]</a>
<h4><br/><br/>The Critical Record</h4>
</li>
<li>As if to follow Byron's lead, Jerome McGann and Susan Wolfson make a shared Hemans-Byron style their point of departure in studies of Romanticism, gender, and ideology. In <em>The Poetics of Sensibility</em> (1995) McGann continued his campaign against Wordsworthian "Romantic ideology" by joining, pincer-like, the sensibility of the 1790s, an aesthetic of "excess," to the sentimentality of Byron, Hemans, and Landon, a poetics of "loss."<a href="#n11">[11]</a> In her recent "Hemans and the Romance of Byron," Wolfson uncovers a pattern of verbal intimacy between these poets, a volatile intertextual "romance" compounded on Hemans's part of love and competition, resonance and misprision.<a href="#n12">[12]</a> Byron may have seduced Hemans, but in Wolfson's reading Hemans's strong (mis)prisions expose the would-be philosophical libertine as a sometime conservative whose heroines cannot be sexually free and still live. The work of McGann and Wolfson shows the high stakes and strong currents (Arnoldian "turbid ebb and flow"?) in studies of Byron and Hemans today.<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>Behind the notable studies of McGann and Wolfson lies a body of groundbreaking but still unpublished writing on Byron and Hemans.<a href="#n13">[13]</a> Two dissertations from the mid-1990s compared the critical and cultural reception of these poets: Dan Albergotti's "Hemans, Byron, and the Reviewers, 1807-1835" (1995) and Chad Edgar's "The Negotiations of the Romantic Popular Poet" (1996).<a href="#n14">[14]</a> Byron figures on a somewhat smaller scale in my dissertation on Hemans and the Cult of the South. The historical burdens and predatory plots of the Cult's great genres (Italianate triumph and Oriental tale) play a part in my 1994 conference paper on <em>The Sceptic</em>, "Scepticism and its Costs: Hemans's Reading of Byron."<a href="#n15">[15]</a><br/>
<br/></li>
<li>Another early conference paper presented here is Andrew Elfenbein's 1993 "Contesting Heterodoxy: Mrs. Hemans vs. Lord Byron."<a href="#n16">[16]</a> Elfenbein's paper turns on the markedly "literary" style of Hemans and Byron, which it finds the site of an early nineteenth-century contest between "normativity" and "heterodoxy." While for McGann the Hemans-Byron style posed a problem in the manner of critical Marxism, for Elfenbein questions of style find answers in normative discourse as understood through Foucault. As Elfenbein writes, "The puzzle is how she was able to address such a wide range of issues without being attacked as a bluestocking. The answer lies in the expanding borders of femininity at the beginning of the nineteenth century". Though Elfenbein devotes his discussion to Hemans's more obviously "literary" <em>The Forest Sanctuary</em> (1825), he lists <em>The Sceptic</em> as among those texts that, but for the finesse of her normative stylistics, would've been deemed "bluestocking."<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>Notwithstanding the imagery and "conditions of extremity" that Hartman finds in <em>The Sceptic</em>, she follows Elfenbein in preferring the narrative poem <em>The Forest Sanctuary</em> for her study of Hemans's poetry of faith and doubt.<a href="#n17">[17]</a> The poet's memoirist Henry Chorley did likewise in 1836, and his description of <em>The Sceptic</em> may provide the clue to this pattern: it was "the only poem, of a purely didactic character, ever written by Mrs. Hemans" (1: 51).<a href="#n18">[18]</a> In twentieth-century criticism, <em>didacticism</em> has, however, been antithetical to the <em>literary</em>. Narrative ingredients in <em>The Forest Sanctuary</em> give Elfenbein purchase on its gender politics and religious ideology, but <em>The Sceptic</em> seems to offer few such literary handles. The problem of genre appears to have left <em>The Sceptic</em><i>; A Poem</i> (A Poem?) at the critical starting gate. Some fresh thoughts about gender and polemics in the early nineteenth century might re-introduce <em>The Sceptic</em> and the kind of poem it is.
<h4><br/><br/>Scepticism and the War of Ideas I:</h4>
</li>
<li>Engaged readers of Hemans find that <em>The Sceptic</em> stands oddly in her work: as a long poem it belongs to her ambitious first period, but as a religious work it has affinities with her late devotional writing.<a href="#n19">[19]</a> To compound the problem, Hemans's critics are accustomed to writing about neither of these periods but rather the lyrics and dramatic monologues of her middle period and its popular volume <i>Records of Woman</i> (1828).<a href="#n20">[20]</a><br/>
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<li>Critics of <em>The Sceptic</em> seem to agree that it is the work of a young woman unusually well-prepared to enter public debate on a highly charged topic and conducted in verse, but they are hard put to account for all the poem's active ingredients together&#8211;gender, the generation of ideas, genre. We might reopen discussion by posing Elfenbein's question again, How was it that this poem's author escaped being drummed out of court as a bluestocking? In 1798 the antijacobin Reverend Polwhele lambasted the Wollstonecraftian woman who "unsex'd" herself on "the public scene," and for twenty years his drumming out seemed to have satisfied public opinion.<a href="#n21">[21]</a> As recently as 1812, Anna Barbauld's long career had been closed by politically interested <em>ad feminam</em> attacks on her <em>Eighteen Hundred and Eleven</em>, with John Wilson Croker decrying her presumptions to "satire" and a "pamphlet in verse."<a href="#n22">[22]</a> In 1820, though, Hemans was praised publicly and fulsomely for her impeccable comportment and lofty purpose in entering the lists against dangerous irreligion (the <em>Quarterly Review</em> and <em>Edinburgh Monthly Review</em>), while Lord Byron resorted to the semi-privacy of his letters to Murray to satirize her as a "blue" for her work in <em>The Sceptic</em> (BLJ 7: 158).<a href="#n23">[23]</a> Whether her entry was truly more acceptable, as Elfenbein suggests&#8211;or her blue-like presumption still an issue but now less mentionable, as Byron's half-public, half-private innuendo suggests&#8211;isn't quite clear.<a href="#n24">[24]</a><br/>
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<li>If a woman poet entering "the public scene" in poetry in 1820 could still draw the label "blue," the results would be oppressive for both poet and poem, for she would be caricatured and her poem rendered "didactic" in a negative sense.<a href="#n25">[25]</a> What if the question we should be posing is not whether the poet is "blue"&#8212;a matter that won't quite come clear&#8211;but rather whether the poem is "didactic" and thus a poem of instruction? What if, <em>contra</em> Chorley and almost everyone else, <em>The Sceptic</em> is not a "didactic" poem?<br/>
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<li>There is another term than "didactic" for the polemical writing evident in <em>The Sceptic</em> and that is "epideictic," a performative mode of ceremonial and generalizable praise and blame, an occasional poetry keyed to biography and civic values, a rhetorical mode developed by the Sophists and catalogued by Aristotle.<a href="#n26">[26]</a> Peter Trinder might be describing such a poem when he calls <em>The Sceptic</em> "remarkable in . . . performance" and says, "The poem must be read as a whole . . . especially because its coherent structure is quite powerful in itself" (27). As an epideictic poem <em>The Sceptic</em> would purvey ideas but also perform them and in excess. It would be showy like Byron's <em>English Bards</em> and <em>Childe Harold</em>, rather than restrained, like Hannah More's <em>The Black Slave Trade: A Poem</em> or <em>Strictures on Female Education</em>.<a href="#n27">[27]</a><br/>
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<li>I would submit that, as a writer of numerous occasional poems and no (other) instructional poems, in <em>The Sceptic</em> Hemans is writing an epideictic poem. By writing in epideictic's distinctively biographical but general terms, she can catch up in her apostrophes a Byron, a Hume, a Shelley, and all they signify and with the periphrasis of epithet render them creatures of their own time and even handiwork: "the young Eagle," "the cold Sceptic," "mortal!," "demigod!," "child of the dust!," "son of the morning." (For whom is <em>The Sceptic</em> "too...apostrophic"?) Writing in a genre that is by turns panegyric and invective, she equips herself for the tonal complexity that Hartman and others hint at, one that sympathizes and hectors by turns and even simultaneously. Here, with a merciless sympathy, she apprehends Byron in flight from his Separation Crisis:
<blockquote>And did all fail thee, in the hour of wrath,<br/>
When burst th' o'erwhelming vials on thy path ?<br/>
Could not the voice of Fame inspire thee then,<br/>
O spirit ! scepter'd by the sons of men,<br/>
With an Immortal's courage, to sustain<br/>
The transient agonies of earthly pain ?<br/></blockquote>
</li>
<li>The Sceptic may not believe in God, but he sheds his faith in "Fame" with difficulty. The fame that offers no support in life ("the transient agonies of earthly pain") still tempts him to imagine a glorious death on "the couch of suicide" (<a href="/editions/sceptic/poem.html#280">Go to <em>The Sceptic</em>, line 282</a>), as she depicts with merciless farce:
<blockquote>A closing triumph, a majestic scene,<br/>
Where gazing nations watch the hero's mien,<br/>
As, undismay'd amidst the tears of all,<br/>
He folds his mantle, regally to fall !<br/>
(<a href="/editions/sceptic/poem.html#355">Go to <i>The Sceptic</i>, line 355</a>)<br/></blockquote>
</li>
<li>Writing in a genre that is biographical but also occasional and civic, she is able to deal in delicious <em>ad hominem</em> allusions as well as generalized epithets. She can even offer compelling keyhole views of the private souls at issue in a Humean science of mind:
<blockquote>And if, when slumber's lonely couch is prest,<br/>
The form departed be thy spirit's guest,<br/>
It bears no light from purer worlds to this;<br/>
Thy future lends not e'en a dream of bliss.<br/>
(<a href="/editions/sceptic/poem.html#125">Go to <em>The Sceptic</em>, line 125</a>)<br/></blockquote>
</li>
<li>The epideictic writer can arraign the lordly fugitive and in the next breath reprise the royal ode; she can turn from Byron's "cold" posthumous life to Charlotte's warm maternal death. (<a href="/editions/sceptic/poem.html#455">Go to <em>The Sceptic</em>, line 457</a>)<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>Engaged in genre, particularly civic genre, Hemans can recall other genres of historical weight, especially the epic. Using Vergil's phrase "Was it for <em>this</em>. . . .?" (spoken and echoed in <i>The Aeneid</i> 4), she can remind the would-be sceptical hero that his specialized preparations and their squandering (like Manfred's, those of a cosmic consciousness) are charges borne communally: "Was it for <em>this</em> thy still-unwearied eye / Kept vigil with the watchfires of the sky / . . .?" (<a href="/editions/sceptic/poem.html#255">Go to <em>The Sceptic</em>, line 255</a>). Going before her, Byron had applied this epic tag to a woman hero, Augustina, the Maid of Saragoza: "Is it for this the Spanish maid, , , / . . . / . . .all unsex'd the Anlace hath espoused/ . . .?" (<i>Childe Harold</i> 1.54). When Hemans applies the tag to her own Spanish woman warrior, Zayda in <i>The Abencerrage</i>, the Polwhelian inflection ("all unsex'd") falls away: "Was it for this I loved thee?" (Wolfson, <i>Hemans</i>, p. 128, l. 461).<a href="#n28">[28]</a><br/>
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<li><em>The Sceptic</em>'s sort of verse&#8211;personalized, risk-taking, hubristic, issue-calling&#8211;is even less commonly associated with women writers than didactic verse.<a href="#n29">[29]</a> Here in the epideictic lies the presumption of a young woman going up against the leading male writer of the day: a woman matching her own presumption with the (auto)biographical hubris of one for whom "the world" itself ranks as a disappointed lover or, if it's lucky, a fair foe (<em>Childe Harold</em> 3.113-14). A young woman can only gain energy from matching this match, which her cat-call ("Was it for <em>this</em>. . .?) has already made a matter of gender reversal (Byron's Augustina, her own Zayda). Here is a poetry of (auto)biographical occasion in which youthful crushes (Byron's for Edleston, perhaps Hemans's for Byron) can be the serious stuff of poetry, a bio-poetry after all of time and temporality, of youth and death rather than instruction and orthodoxy. It is epideictic poetry, I submit, that accommodates and accounts for the hubristic heights and unsounded depths of an intertext made up of <em>Childe Harold, Manfred,</em> "The Abencerrage," <em>The Sceptic</em> and more. It is epideictic poetry that Hemans practices in poems contemporaneous with <em>The Sceptic</em>&#8211;her royal odes&#8211;and <i>Stanzas to the Memory of the Late King</i> would be republished with <em>The Sceptic</em>; it is epideictic poetry that hyperlinks <em>The Sceptic</em> with Childe Harold 4 when both make a late turn to elegy in saluting Princess Charlotte.<a href="#n30">[30]</a><br/>
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<li><a name="2"> </a>It is epideictic poetry in its panegyric mode that accounts for <em>The Sceptic's</em> epigraph from a funeral oration by seventeenth-century French cleric Bossuet&#8211;specifically, his oration for a Princess endangered by a libertine and sceptical culture. We note that Hemans does not cite from the more <em>didactic</em> work of Bossuet, which was notable for having brought about the (fleeting) conversion of Hemans's favorite sceptic historian, Edward Gibbon, to Catholicism. (<a href="/editions/sceptic/commentary.html#Epigraph">Go to Commentary on <em>The Sceptic's</em> Epigraph.</a>) It is epideictic poetry in its invective mode that accounts for the negative excess in the poem and its notes compounded of an Old Testament God and the Apocalypse (<a href="/editions/sceptic/poem.html#n1a">Go to <em>The Sceptic</em>, "Notes"</a>). These negative energies strain containment in "normativity"; they are what drive the poem's polemic, make up Hemans's own version of <em>scepticism</em>, and make her polemic a "war of ideas" that takes no prisoners and spills over into a new era (<a href="http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem89.html">Go to "Dover Beach"</a>):
<blockquote>And we are here as on a darkling plain<br/>
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,<br/>
Where ignorant armies clash by night.<br/></blockquote>
</li>
<li>In her very attraction to Byron she is brought closer to him and his "antiphilosophical" scepticism whose method might be described as "negative dialectics."<a href="#n31">[31]</a> But how account for those readers of Hemans who have credited <em>The Sceptic</em> with not only instruction but consolation?<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>Students of Hemans will recall a letter from Hannah More in which, given Hemans's achievement in <em>Modern Greece</em> of "just views" and "delicate perceptions," More anticipates "no small pleasure" and, she hopes, "benefit" from <em>The Sceptic</em> (Hughes 34, Wolfson, <i>Hemans</i> 533). Any response she had after reading the poem was not, to my knowledge, recorded. Like other critics of Hemans, More searches for the logos of orthodoxy but lingers over its supplement literature. Harriet Hughes offers testimonials from two other readers of <em>The Sceptic</em> who might match More in piety. Their ingenuous reactions seem less interesting, somehow, than the poet's own studied responses. In a letter to one grief-stricken friend who found consolation in <em>The Sceptic</em>, Hemans sounds more the <em>writer</em> <em><u>sceptical</u></em> of her own effects&#8211;second-guessing her rhetoric, fishing about for compliments&#8211;than the ministrant serene in her faith:
<blockquote>Perhaps, when your mind is sufficiently composed, you will inform me which were the passages distinguished by the approbation of that pure and pious mind: they will be far more highly valued by me than anything I have ever written. (Hughes 34)<br/></blockquote>
</li>
<li>To date, the critic who has studied Hemans most searchingly as a consolatory writer is Michael Williamson, in "Impure Affections: Felicia Hemans's Elegiac Poetry and Contaminated Grief." His conclusion, that her work is profoundly anti-consolatory and given instead to an excess of negativity, would disappoint More. For Williamson, Hemans "redirects our attention away from dramas of elegiac transformation and inheritance and toward often unsuccessful dramas of <em>survival.</em>"<a href="#n32">[32]</a> In readings of ten elegiac poems from throughout Hemans's career, Williamson finds depicted not the augmentation but "the waste of women's psychic and imaginative energy in a world tainted by male death" (19): in short, "a darkling plain." Barbara Taylor and I explore similar readings of Hemans's youthful "The Domestic Affections" in connection with <em>The Sceptic</em>. As in elegy, so in epideictic: Hemans's polemics against "The Sceptic" and her own expressions of radical doubt form a package that is simply too self-critical and self-confounding to be recuperated to "didacticism" or a "normative femininity." And all the same, the poetry might after all be consoling or at least bracing for those who can be assuaged by the fairly strong tonic. As a polemical and specifically epideictic poem of praise and blame, then, <em>The Sceptic</em> offers a level of critical purchase that is not merely potential but actual and continuously so.<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>But moving now from gender and genre to the generation of ideas in <em>The Sceptic</em>, I look again for collaboration to Barbara Taylor, whose close readings abide by the "particularities" of a Marilyn Butler rather than the broad epistemes of a Foucault. In completing my own offering on scepticism as a rhetorical-poetical "war of ideas," I turn to the close grappling between Byron and Hemans over the enthymeme, or rhetorical syllogism, which like the epideictic is a legacy of the classical Sophism.<a href="#n33">[33]</a>
<h4><br/><br/>Scepticism and the War of Ideas II: Believers and Sceptics</h4>
</li>
<li>As we would expect from two such passionate writers as Hemans and Byron, the ideas at issue here are not cool, colorless counters but elements in a cruel logic all too recognizable as human destiny<a href="#n34">[34]</a>. Both poets are historical rather than ontological thinkers; for them ideas form and deform themselves in bodies and blood. Appropriately, it is neither <em>deity</em> nor <em>creed</em> in the first instance that is subject to their debate over scepticism but rather the <em>afterlife</em>; for a deity can serve principally, as he does in <em>The Sceptic</em>, to guarantee an afterlife, and a creed to guarantee a deity.<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>In this light <em>Childe Harold's Pilgrimage</em> Canto 2, stanzas 3-9 (<a href="/editions/sceptic/Pilgrimage.html#canto2">Go to <i>Childe Harold's Pilgrimage</i> ~Canto 2</a>), becomes a key passage. Set on the Acropolis these stanzas perform a typically Byronic swerve, in this case from invective to elegy. Tracing history as a palimpsest of religion, Byron decries the way religions extort the sacrifice of this life for the promise of another afterwards; he welcomes the civilization obtained by Socratic scepticism; then, stunningly, he concedes that scepticism will be betrayed and religion served in the grieving lover's heart. As part of the debate over scepticism portrayed by Taylor, this passage attracted "extraordinary interest" on publication (Edgar 76, 82-87). It is framed by further generic and tonal work of great interest, for stanzas 1-2 offer an epic invocation to Athena and stanzas 10-15 a meditation on the Parthenon and invective against Lord Elgin.<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>In this scene of Athenian democracy violated, Byron depicts the parade of "creeds" for whom a "victim bleeds" (st. 3-6) before unveiling Socrates's wise scepticism about those creeds:
<blockquote>Well didst thou speak, Athena's wisest son!<br/>
'All that we know is, nothing can be known.'<br/>
(st. 7)<br/></blockquote>
</li>
<li>We do not rest here, for the section moves on to the individual's desire to believe against all scepticism of "sophist" and "Sadducee" that "there be / A land of souls beyond that sable shore" (st. 7-8). The section concludes with an elegiac stanza (9, keyed to Edleston) that underwrites both our concern for the generically young male victim who "bleeds" under the "creeds" in stanza 3 <em>and</em> our desire that such victims live eternally as only those same creeds can promise. This poetic confounding, part and parcel of Byron's epideictic verse, resonates in Hemans's verse as well. In <em>The Sceptic</em>, hope of an afterlife appears early as a promise of light&#8212;one that graces our stay on however rocky an earth (<a href="/editions/sceptic/poem.html#25">Go to <em>The Sceptic</em>, line 27</a>)&#8212;but later it shades into a (dark, insubstantial) shadow cast by "the Rock of Ages" (<a href="/editions/sceptic/poem.html#335">Go to <em>The Sceptic</em>, line 338</a>). While Byron belies scepticism with faith, Hemans belies faith with scepticism, and neither reversal rests there.<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>In Byron's passage, believers and sceptics are historically specific and temperamentally passionate: "'Twas Jove's&#8212;'tis Mahomet's&#8212;"; "The Sadducee / And sophists, madly vain of dubious lore" (st. 3, 8).(<a href="/editions/sceptic/Pilgrimage.html#canto2.3">Go to <em>Childe Harold's Pilgrimage</em></a>) The individual caught in the midst of the debate is flesh and blood, a "Poor child of Doubt and Death, whose hope is built on reeds" (st. 3). This "child"'s hopes and fears are less for himself than for "thou!&#8211;whose love and life together fled"; "thou" whom he may never meet again, "thou" whom "'twere bliss enough to know thy spirit blest!" (st. 9). As elsewhere in Canto 2, here the occasion for elegy is young male loveliness dead betimes: "Thou art gone, thou lov'd and lovely one, / Whom youth and youth's affection bound to me" (st. 95). "Doubt and Death" are matters of passion and occasion, not of bloodless epistemology and ontology.<a href="#n35">[35]</a> So the issues play themselves out in Hemans, as both writers show themselves sceptical about scepticism.<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>Arguments pursued in these poems take the form of "enthymemes," curtal syllogisms, which like the epideictic mode are a legacy of the Sophists. As Jeffrey Walker describes it, the enthymeme works from "a network of oppositions" toward a "passional identification" worthy of its root meaning, <em>thymos</em> as heart. In Aristotle's words, it is "'the body of persuasion."'<a href="#n36">[36]</a> As Walker points out, the enthymeme emerges in relationship to "opportunity" or "occasion"; arriving at identification in the moment. It may seem but a partial syllogism, one that leaps to conclusions; but hinging as it does on the body&#8211;on biography in history, an audience's material investment in its own destiny&#8211;the enthymeme invokes its missing premise of "necessity." When J. T. Coleridge said of Hemans's argument in <em>The Sceptic</em> that it "is one of irresistible force. . simply resting the truth of religion on the necessity of it; on the utter misery and helplessness of man without it," he is reading the poem enthymemically. Trinder's perception that Hemans offers an argument for "the necessity of deism" (27) is of the same order, while revealing more of her critique of orthodoxy.<br/>
<br/></li>
<li><a name="1"> </a>As certainly for Hemans as for Byron, this debate <em>about</em> scepticism is an argument about history carried out in history. Elsewhere Hemans reveals her interest in Gibbon's sceptical historiography.<a href="#n37">[37]</a> (<a href="/editions/sceptic/commentary.html#Epigraph">Go to Commentary on <em>The Sceptic's</em> Epigraph.</a>) Sceptical discussions of <em>The Sceptic</em> historian Barthold Niebuhr appear in her letters and the books of her beloved son Charles, who revels in Niebuhr's convincing representation of a legend in which he, Niebuhr, did not believe. This is the legend of Numa, Rome's pacific second king, and his muse-consort Egeria. In a nice counterpoint to Hemans's epithets for Byron, Maria Jane Jewsbury gave her the literary name "Egeria." (Go to Commentary on <em>The Sceptic's</em> Epigraph.) That Hemans often linked her interest in doubt and belief to pre-Christian legend rather than Christian dogma is, however, a subject for another day.<a href="#n38">[38]</a><br/>
<br/></li>
<li>What's important to note at all points in the Hemans-Byron debate (or collusion?) over scepticism is that matters of belief are not <em>doxa</em> but sanctions, sanctions in the historical, material form of human sacrifice (the bleeding victims of <em>Childe Harold 2</em>, of <em>Dartmoor</em>) and its assuaging (the pacific rites of Numa and Egeria, the faith in Edleston as a "spirit blest"). What's at stake are young bodies subject to war and to love (war's marriage system), and both systems affect both poets, given the bisexual manhood of Byron and the regiment-ridden womanhood of Hemans (lest we forget her separation from Captain Hemans in 1818). For both poets, religion should keep an unbloodied altar (<a href="/editions/sceptic/Pilgrimage.html">Go to <em>Childe Harold's Pilgrimage</em></a>); for Hemans, religion should offer sanctuary&#8211;enough so on earth, that we can believe so in heaven; with a reverse argument actually the weaker. (<a href="/editions/sceptic/commentary.html#cities">Read the note "Then ye shall appoint you cities"</a>).<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>Hemans and Byron are institutional rather than theological writers, and they write as though at the mercy of their and their audience's dispensations. While these (Christianity; Roman state religion; the same?) would displace vengeance and bloody sacrifice, they do so only to renew and even institutionalize them.<a href="#n39">[39]</a> <a name="fly"> </a>Hemans may urge <em>The Sceptic</em> to "Call thou on Him" when the "lightning" of vengeance flies&#8211;"Fly to the City of thy Refuge, fly!"&#8211;but the refuge offered has been designed by Levites for a Slayer and it brings him surely to trial. (<a href="#n5a">Go to <em>The Sceptic</em>, note 5</a>) Such is the unbloodied altar and such our earthly sanctuary: "Is earth still Eden?" she has asked <em>The Sceptic</em>, "Is all so cloudless and so calm below / That we seek no fairer scenes than <em>life</em> can show?" (l. 23-24). Heaven mirrors the scene at the City of our Refuge, however, for the Father remains the Avenger stopped at the gates and the Son is still the "still small" Hope of acquittal (<a href="/editions/sceptic/poem.html#50">Go to <em>The Sceptic</em>, line 53</a> and <a href="/editions/sceptic/poem.html#340">line 344</a>) once inside that city :
<blockquote>If Hope's retreat hath been, through all the past,<br/>
The shadow by the Rock of Ages cast,<br/>
Father, forsake us not !&#8212;<br/>
<br/>
<a name="mirror"> </a>and so heaven mirrors earth, its Avenger and its Hope.<br/></blockquote>
<h4><br/><br/>Scepticism and the War of Ideas III: Scepticism and the Post-War</h4>
</li>
<li>The Hemans-Byron poetic war of ideas couldn't end with Waterloo. For both, the earthly institutions of wartime and postwar Britain remained at issue: for Hemans, the prisons, schools, and temples; for Byron, the theater, legislature, courts; for both, the press. Hemans re-engineered benevolence in the company of women and men, as Marlon Ross portrayed in his 1989 <em>The Contours of Masculine Desire</em>. Byron sought to free young men <em>from</em> the rack of battle, altar, and factory frame and <em>for</em> a stage where (patriarchal) tragedy offered almost a loophole of cultural change and sexual difference.<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>Byron and Hemans could look back to Enlightenment thinkers, a Gibbon or Hume, Voltaire or Rousseau, for models of scepticism&#8211;and they did. But to be a <em>sceptic</em> in the years 1815-1820 was to be something a good deal less neutral and magisterial than an Enlightenment depiction would have it. With the French Revolution, Enlightenment scepticism had licensed the destruction of foundational institutions; in its encounter with history, Enlightenment scepticism could offer no opposition to unprincipled conquest; it could offer only (pace Anne Hartman) the unaccountable benevolence that bemused Britain's sceptical philosopher David Hume. Thus is confected Wordsworth's portrait of the Sceptic or Solitary in his 1814 <em>The Excursion</em>, and it is not one to inspire (<a href="http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww399.html">Go to Book II of <i>The Excursion</i></a>). Whether Wordworth's dazed and quixotic figure served to caution the age is hard to tell; Hemans read <em>The Excursion</em> and admired its "religious" passages in which "the poet speaks of departed friends" (perhaps in Book I? Hughes 38).<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>Certainly <em>The Excursion's</em> post-Revolutionary combination of complacency and malaise galled Percy Shelley, a member of this generation for whom "la guerre n'est pas finie."<a href="#n40">[40]</a> For this atheist, and his sceptical post-war colleague Byron, the work of scepticism was far from over, given the unreformed institutions at home and collusion with reactionary powers abroad. Hemans shared a passionate temperament with Byron and, needing the same surcease, adopted his plea, <em>Implora pace</em>.<a href="#n41">[41]</a> <em>The Sceptic</em> she loved and feared was not the bemused Hume or the dazed Wordsworthian Solitary but the passionate Byron or even Shelley who dared pick up Napoleon's Promethean mantle and restage the Titanic as the New.<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>In commenting on Hemans's <em>The Sceptic</em> as an engagement with Byron, I have recurred to the very interested debate between these most popular male and female poets, one appearing before the press in 1820 as a Christian Tory, the other as a radical sceptic. This debate, because it is interested, runs much deeper than partisanship, lending its cross-currents to the women and men who believe in and doubt the institutions that simultaneously destroy them and sustain them.</li>
</ol><br/>
<h4> Notes</h4>
<p align="left"> <br/>
<a name="n1"> </a><strong>1.</strong> Rev. of <em>The Restoration of the Works of Art to Italy</em>, etc. By Felicia Hemans. <em>Quarterly Review</em> 24 (Oct. 1820): 130-39. On the basis of a letter [1820] by William Gifford to John Murray, this review is attributed to John Taylor Coleridge by Hill Shine and Helen Chadwick Shine in <em>The Quarterly Review Under Gifford: Identification of Contributors</em>, 1809-1824 (Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1949), 72, and again by Jonathan Cutmore in his continuously updated web resource, <em>The Quarterly Review, 1809-1824: Notes, Contents, and Identification of Contributors</em> (9-2-01): for Cutmore's attribution and a link to the review itself, see <i>Quarterly Review</i> index pages. As Cutmore notes, several Hemans scholars attribute the review to Gifford. My thanks to Susan Wolfson for pointing to a basis for the Gifford attribution: [Harriet Hughes, ed.] <em>The Works of Mrs Hemans</em>, 7 vols., (Edinburgh, Blackwood; London, Cadell, 1839), 3.150n, and again [Harriet Hughes, ed.] <em>The Poems of Felicia Hemans, A New Edition, Chronologically Arranged, With Illustrative Notes and a Selection of Contemporary Criticisms</em> (Edinburgh and London: Blackwood, 1849, etc.), 190. For an interesting reading of the Coleridge review among others, see Chad Edgar, n. 7 below.<br/> </p>
<p align="left"> <a name="n2"> </a><strong>2.</strong> <em>Byron's Letters and Journals</em>, ed. Leslie A. Marchand, 13 vols. (London: Murray, 1973-82). In subsequent references this work will be abbreviated BLJ.<br/> </p>
<p align="left"> <a name="n3"> </a><strong>3.</strong> The material success is the easier to measure, while evidence of these poets' powers is longer to tell. On one or both of these counts, see Paula Feldman, "The Poet and the Profits: Felicia Hemans and the Literary Marketplace," <em>Keats-Shelley Journal</em> 46 (1997), 148-76; William St. Clair, <em>The Impact of Byron's Writings: An Evaluative Approach</em> (New York: St. Martin's, 1990); Nanora Sweet and Julie Melnyk, "Introduction: Why Hemans Now?" <em>Felicia Hemans: Reimagining Poetry in the Nineteenth Century</em>, 1-3, 11-12n3-5, and the volume at large. <a href="http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem89.html">See also Matthew Arnold's 1867 poem, "Dover Beach."<br/></a> </p>
<p align="left"> &#160;<strong><a name="n4"> </a>4.</strong> Peter W. Trinder's pamphlet-like <em>Mrs Hemans</em> (U of Wales P, 1984) remains the only critical monograph on the poet; he discusses <em>The Sceptic</em> on pages 27-29. There are now two modern scholarly editions of Hemans's work, but <em>The Sceptic</em> is not collected in either, making this electronic text the more necessary: Susan J. Wolfson, <em>Felicia Hemans: Selected Poems, Letters, and Reception Materials</em> (Princeton: Princeton U P, 2000) and Gary Kelly, <em>Felicia Hemans: Selected Poems, Prose, and Letters</em> (Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 2002). <br/></p>
<p> <strong><a name="n5"> </a>5.</strong> See Donald H. Reiman, Introduction, <em>Poems, England and Spain, Modern Greece</em>, etc., by Felicia Hemans (New York: Garland, 1978) v. (Vols. 64-70 <em>The Romantic Context: Poetry, ed.</em> Donald H. Reiman, 1976-78.)<br/> </p>
<p> <a name="n6"> </a><strong>6.</strong> Arthur Hemans quoted in [Harriet Hughes],"Memoir of Mrs Hemans," <em>The Works of Mrs Hemans</em>, 7 vols., (Edinburgh, Blackwood; London, Cadell, 1839), 1: 50 and note. Subsequent references to this source will be in text and to "Hughes."<br/> </p>
<p> <a name="n7"> </a><strong>7.</strong> Though our project links <em>The Sceptic</em> to Byron's life and work, it has strong connections to Shelley's work from "Ozymandias" to "Alastor"; for related work see Armstrong, "Natural and National Monuments."<br/> </p>
<p> <strong><a name="n8"> </a>8.</strong> Henry Fothergill Chorley, <em>Memorials of Mrs. Hemans with Illustrations of Her Literary Character from Her Private Correspondence</em>, 2 vols. (London: Saunders &amp; Otley, 1836), 2: 106, 115. Regarding Hemans's continued use of Byron, see Chad Edgar's interesting argument that critics like J. T. Coleridge were attempting&#8211;and failing&#8211;to transfer "their sense of betrayal [over <i>Don Juan</i>] to Byron's female admirers." For Edgar, their attempt "suggests the overwhelmingly male orientation that characterizes the hostile reception of <em>Don Juan</em> and the distance that separates the reviewers' concerns from those of female readers and writers" ("The Negotiations of the Romantic Popular Poet: A Comparison of the Careers of Felicia Hemans and Lord Byron," diss., [New York University, 1996], 187).<br/> </p>
<p> <strong><a name="n9"> </a>9.</strong> Susan Wolfson conveniently collects these letter passages in her <em>Hemans</em>, 535-37.<br/> </p>
<p> <strong><a name="n10"> </a>10.</strong> Chorley 2: 323. BLJ 5: 108, 7: 113, 158, 183, 201. Keats is included in Byron's stylistic slur.<br/> </p>
<p> <a name="n11"> </a><strong>11.</strong> Jerome J. McGann, <em>The Poetics of Sensibility: A Revolution in Literary Style</em> (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996). Stephen C. Behrendt provides considerable evidence for such an aesthetic bridge in "The Gap that Is Not a Gap: British Poetry by Women, 1802-1812," <em>Romanticism and Women Poets: Opening the Doors of Reception</em>, ed. Harriet Kramer Linkin and Stephen C. Behrendt (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1999), 25-45.<br/> </p>
<p> <a name="n12"> </a><strong>12.</strong> Susan J. Wolfson, "Hemans and the Romance of Byron," <em>Felicia Hemans: Reimagining Poetry in the Nineteenth Century</em>, ed. Nanora Sweet and Julie Melnyk (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), 155-80.<br/> </p>
<p> <a name="n13"> </a><strong>13.</strong> For a sense of publisher response to Hemans projects in the 1990s, see Susan Wolfson's "Editing Felicia Hemans for the Twenty-First Century" <em>Romanticism On the Net</em> 19 (August 2000) [13 December 2000].<br/> </p>
<p> <a name="n14"> </a><strong>14.</strong> C. Dantzler Albergotti, "Byron, Hemans, and the Reviewers, 1807-1835," unpub. diss., University of South Carolina, 1995; Chad Edgar, see n. 7 above; and his related "Felicia Hemans and the Shifting Field of Romanticism" in <em>Felicia Hemans: Reimagining Poetry in the Nineteenth Century</em>, 124-34. One of the advantages of a web edition on Hemans is the notice it gives fugitive criticism&#8211;particularly dissertations and conference papers&#8211;written on Hemans during the period of her rapid reentry into critical discussion in the 1990s.<br/> </p>
<p> <a name="n15"> </a><strong>15.</strong> Nanora Louise Ziebold Sweet, "The Bowl of Liberty: Felicia Hemans and the Romantic Mediterranean," unpub. diss., University of Michigan, 1993 (82-132); see also Sweet, "Gender and Modernity in <em>The Abencerrage</em>: Hemans, Rushdie, and 'the Moor's Last Sigh,'" <em>Felicia Hemans: Reimagining Poetry in the Nineteenth Century</em>, 181-95.<br/> </p>
<p> <a name="n16"> </a><strong>16.</strong> Elfenbein gave his paper at the first meeting of the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism, 1993, London, Ontario.<br/> </p>
<p> <a name="n17"> </a><strong>17.</strong> Chad Edgar similarly relocates Hemans's contentions with Byron in her 1823 play <em>The Vespers of Palermo</em> (188-224).<br/> </p>
<p> <a name="n18"> </a><strong>18.</strong> Other critics go farther and characterize Hemans's work as "didactic" in general: see Angela Leighton in <em>Victorian Women Poets: Writing Against the Heart</em> (Charlottesville: U P of Virginia, 1992), 19, 38. While saying that Hemans's work offers "smooth didactic comforts," Leighton also senses the problem of genre, finding "an edge of scepticism," "the hint of scepticism, which occasionally ruffles the smooth public-speaking of her verse" (17, 19, 26). Like Elfenbein, Hartman, and Edgar, Leighton refers discussion of genre to Hemans's later poems, specifically her dramatic monologues (37ff).<br/> </p>
<p> <a name="n19"> </a><strong>19.</strong> Julie Melnyk's "Hemans's Later Poetry: Religion and the Vatic Poet" (<em>Felicia Hemans: Reimagining Poetry in the Nineteenth Century</em>, 74-92) is the first published study of Hemans's late religious poetry.<br/> </p>
<p> <a name="n20"> </a><strong>20.</strong> The recognizably feminine concerns of this mid-career poetry have appealed to feminist critics, its sensitivity to changing market conditions to cultural critics. Paula R. Feldman's editing of <em>Records of Woman, With Other Poems</em> (Lexington: U P of Kentucky, 1999) provides a continuous feminist reading of the book. For further feminist examples go to <a href="http://www.umsl.edu/%7Esweet/swetbib.htm">Sweet's home page Bibliography:</a> Goslee (1996), Harding (1995), Kaplan (1975). McGann (op. cit.) illustrates the historicist interest in Hemans's middle period lyrics, Isobel Armstrong a combined feminist and cultural approach in "Msrepresentations: Codes of Affect and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Women's Poetry," <em>Women's Poetry, Late Romantic to Late Victorian</em>, ed. Isobel Armstrong and Virginia Blain (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999), 3-32, and "Natural and National Monuments&#8211;Felicia Hemans's 'The Image in Lava': A Note," <em>Felicia Hemans: Reimagining Poetry in the Nineteenth Century</em>, 212-30.<br/> </p>
<p> <a name="n21"> </a><strong>21.</strong> For an interesting website concerning the Reverend Polwhele's 1798 poem "The Unsex'd Females" and women's poetry <a href="http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/britpo/unsex/unsex.html">see "The Unsex'd Females."</a> For one of several astute commentaries on the Wollstonecraftian "backlash" and its effect on Romantic-era women poets like Hemans, see Andrew Ashfield, Introduction, <em>Romantic Women Poets, 1770-1838</em><i>: An Anthology</i> (Manchester: Manchester U P, 1995) xii-xiii. In <em>Victorian Women Poets</em>. Barbara Taylor notes that Polwhele competed (unsuccessfully) against Hemans in the Royal Society competition regarding <i>Dartmoor</i>.<br/> </p>
<p> <a name="n22"> </a><strong>22.</strong> For this passage from Croker's review in the <em>Quarterly Review</em> and a further survey of Barbauld's silencing in the press, see Duncan Wu, <em>Romantic Women Poets: An Anthology</em> (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 8.<br/> </p>
<p> <a name="n23"> </a><strong>23.</strong> For both reviews see Wolfson, <i>Hemans</i>, 530-35. See Wolfson's interesting analysis, too, of how "any contrary strains in the poetry. . .were elided, or if recognized, then contained in a 'hyper'-feminine passion, rather than sounded for subversive implications . . . ." (525).<br/> </p>
<p> <a name="n24"> </a><strong>24</strong>. In 1841 George Gilfillan's review of Hemans in <em>Tait's Edinburgh Magazine</em> denies that Hemans was "blue"; evidently the question remained in the air; see n. 24.<br/> </p>
<p> <a name="n25"> </a><strong>25.</strong> See Marlon B. Ross, <em>The Contours of Masculine Desire: Romanticism and the Rise of Women's Poetry</em> (New York: Oxford, 1989). Ross offers a sympathetic reading of the eighteenth-century bluestockings but is sensitive to the label's "negative consequences" in Hemans's time (247). Gilfillan's review of Hemans in <em>Tait's</em> reveals how the "image" of the bluestocking is used to constrain the woman poet: She can assume "'the ludicrous image of a double-dyed Blue, in papers and morning wrapper, sweating at some stupendous treatise or tragedy from morn to noon,'" etc. Or she can turn "'from the duties or delights of the day to the employments of the desk,'" where with "'as little pedantry.. .as in writing a letter'" she can write "'a poem'" (Tait's 14 (1847): 361; qtd. Leighton 28-29).<br/> </p>
<p> <a name="n26"> </a><strong>26.</strong> A source that cannot be bettered as a critical history of epideictic poetry is Jeffrey Walker, "Aristotle's Lyric: Re-Imagining the Rhetoric of Epideictic Song," <em>College English</em> 51.1 (Jan. 1989): 5-28 (my only reservation being the essay's monologic treatment of Romanticism). One of Walker's models epideictic writers is the great sophist Gorgias. For the premier modern treatment of the epideictic mode in rhetoric, see Ch[aim] Perelman and L. Olbrechsts-Tyteca, <em>The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation</em> (1958), trans. John Wilkinson and Purcell Weaver, Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions (Notre Dame, IN: U of Notre Dame P, 1969).<br/> </p>
<p> <a name="n27"> </a><strong>27.</strong> For a recent essay discussing Hemans's resistance to containment, see Susan Wolfson, "Felicia Hemans and the Revolving Doors of Reception," <em>Romanticism and Women Poets: Opening the Doors of Reception</em> (Lexington: U P of Kentucky, 1999), 214-41.<br/> </p>
<p> <a name="n28"> </a><strong>28.</strong> Readers of Wordsworth will recall this tab from Book I of <i>The Prelude</i>, l, 269. Epic similes carry Hemans into a Homeric territory in <i>The Sceptic</i>, a territory she shares with Byron who also enjoys analogies between earthquake and seaquake. With a cruel twist of fate worthy of the ancient master, she offers this analogy ("as. . ."): "as the sight of some far-distant shore" &#8211;once the drowning seaman's <u>home</u>&#8211;is now hopelessly out of his reach, so the winged "Hope" of <u>homely succor</u> has been shorn of her "plume" by the sceptic himself and it cannot pluck him up (do we recognize Coleridge's mariner with his albatross?). Later, in a passage whose sudden delicacy has made it a favorite of reviewers, the "hero" forgotten by "gazing nations" may die "unnoticed" as do "thousands": </p>
<blockquote>
As the light leaf, whose fall to ruin bears<br/>
Some trembling insect's little world of cares,<br/>
Descends in Silence&#8211;while around waves on<br/>
The mighty forest, reckless what is gone !<br/>
(<a href="/editions/sceptic/poem.html#355'">Click here to go to <i>The Sceptic</i>, line 359</a>)
</blockquote>
<p> <a name="n29"> </a><strong>29.</strong> Indeed, Anne Mellor has suggested that a broad band of Romantic-period women writers (not Hemans) can be distinguished from their male compeers on the basis of their rationality, with achievements like Mary Wollstonecraft's and Hannah More's in prose and didactic poetry leading the way. Mellor broaches this argument in <em>Romanticism and Gender</em> (New York: Routledge, 1993) and continues it in <em>Mothers of the Nation: Women's Political Writing in England</em>, <i>1780-1830</i> (Bloomington: Indiana U P, 2000). As capacious as is Mellor's work regarding prose and poetry, ultimately it steps away from the problem of a public poetics for Romantic-period women writers.<br/> </p>
<p> <a name="n30"> </a><strong>30.</strong> But see Taylor here about the republication of <em>The Sceptic</em>. For a study of elegies about the Princess, see Stephen C. Behrendt, <em>Royal Mourning and Regency Culture: Elegies and Memorials of Princess Charlotte</em> (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1993).<br/> </p>
<p> <a name="n31"> </a><strong>31.</strong> I adapt here from Terence Allan Hoagwood, <em>Byron's Dialectic: Scepticism and the Critique of Culture</em> (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell U P, 1993).<br/> </p>
<p> <a name="n32"> </a><strong>32.</strong> Williamson, in <em>Felicia Hemans: Reimagining Poetry in the Nineteenth Century</em>, 20.<br/> </p>
<p> <a name="n33"> </a><strong>33.</strong> See Marilyn Butler, "Against Tradition: The Case for a Particularized Historical Method," <em>Historical Studies and Literary Criticism</em>, ed. Jerome J. McGann (Madison: U Wisconsin P, 1985), 25-47. Readers will notice that I adopt my term "war of ideas" from Butler's title <em>Jane Austen and the War of Ideas</em> (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975). For a published illustration of Taylor's method, see "The Search for a Space: A Note on Felicia Hemans and the Royal Society of Literature," <em>Felicia Hemans: Reimagining Poetry in the Nineteenth Century</em>, 115-23.<br/> </p>
<p> <a name="n34"> </a><strong>34.</strong> Another sort of scepticism&#8211;an ontological one regarding appearances and realities&#8211;is of course a long-standing topic in later Romantic studies, as in Donald H. Reiman, <em>Intervals of Inspiration: The Skeptical Tradition and the Psychology of Romanticism</em> (Greenwood, FL: Penkevill, 1988).<br/> <br/> <a name="n35"> </a><strong>35.</strong> But Hartman's emphasis on Humean crises of identity and philosophies of emotion illustrates that epistemology does not have to be "bloodless."<br/> </p>
<p> <a name="n36"> </a><strong>36.</strong> Jeffrey Walker, "The Body of Persuasion: A Theory of the Enthymeme," <em>College English</em> 56 (Jan. 1994): 46-65; here, p. 48.<br/> </p>
<p> <a name="n37"> </a><strong>37.</strong> Hemans cites Gibbon in <em>Tales, and Historic Scenes</em>'s "The Widow of Crescentius," "Alaric in Italy," and "The Abencerrage" (1819). On the latter see my "Gender and Modernity," p.189.<br/> </p>
<p> <a name="n38"> </a><strong>38.</strong> On Hemans and Niebuhr, see Chorley 2: 171: the poet is drawn to the scientific historian even while, according to Chorley, regarding him "as merely a sceptical inquirer into the traditions of antiquity; and it will be remembered with what small complacency or toleration she was prepared to regard any destroyer of the ancient legends in which her imagination took hold." See Charles Isidore Hemans, <em>Historic and Monumental Rome</em> (London: Williams and Norgate, 1874), 14, 45-47. Primitive Rome was epitomized for Byron and the Hemans (and Livy and Niebuhr) by Numa, Rome's pacific and legendary second king, and more to the point, the religious institutions prompted by his muse-consort Egeria. For Byron on Numa and Egeria, see in <i>Childe Harold</i> 4 (114 ff.). For Jewsbury on Hemans and Egeria, see Ellen Peel and Nanora Sweet, "Corinne and the Woman as Poet in England: Hemans, Jewsbury, and Barrett Browning," <em>The Novel's Seductions: Sta&#235;l's</em> Corinne <em>in Critical Inquiry</em> (Lewisburg: Bucknell U P, 1999), 211-14; and W. M. Rossetti, "Prefatory Notice," <em>The Poetical Works of Mrs. Hemans</em> (London: Moxon, 1873; etc.), 22-23. I further supplement Hemans's scepticism with paganism, her history with legend, in "Hemans, Heber, and <em>Superstition and Revelation</em>: Experiment and Orthodoxy at the Scene of Writing," <i>Romantic Passions</i>, ed. Elizabeth Fay; Romantic Praxis Series, website Romantic Circles; March 1998. <br/></p>
<p> <strong><a name="n39"> </a>39.</strong> In a passage Hemans may or may not have read, Gibbon devotes his scepticism to the Holy War of the Crusades, which he sees as the natural result of institutionalized penance spilling over into nihilism: "the guilt of adultery was multiplied by daily repetition" in confession and penitence, "that of homicide might involve the massacre of a whole people" in the "more honorable mode of satisfaction" of "military service against the Saracens": <em>The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire</em>, ed. H. H. Milman, 6 vols., (New York: Harper, 1862) 5.547-49. <br/></p>
<p> <a name="n40"> </a><strong>40.</strong> To vary the title of Alain Renais's post-Revolutionary film <em>La Guerre Est Finie</em> (1965). <br/></p>
<p> <a name="n41"> </a><strong>41.</strong> For the opposite view, that "[v]igorous passion and inspiration were antithetical qualities to Hemans's poetry," see the Furr dissertation (80). Furr's opinion harks back to mid-twentieth-century opinion epitomized in Ian Jack's <em>English Literature, 1815-1832</em> (1963), who found a "low pulse" in Hemans's work: See Wolfson <em>Felicia Hemans</em> xiv-xv on Jack. <br/></p>
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</html></div></div></div><section class="field field-name-field-parent-section field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Section:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/node/31535">Electronic Editions</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-resource-index field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Resource:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/editions/sceptic/index.html">The Sceptic; A Poem: A Hemans-Byron Dialogue</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-authored-by-secondary- field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Authored by (Secondary):&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/person/sweet-nanora">Sweet, Nanora</a></div></div></section><section class="field 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href="/taxonomy/term/4725" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">life after death</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-52 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Section:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/section/editions/the-sceptic-a-hemans-byron-dialogue" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Sceptic: A Hemans-Byron Dialogue</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-organization-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Organization:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/organization/royal-society-of-literature" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Royal Society of Literature</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-person-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Person:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/thomas-moore" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Thomas Moore</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/john-taylor-coleridge" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">John Taylor Coleridge</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/susan-wolfson" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Susan Wolfson</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/peter-trinder" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Peter Trinder</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/john-murray" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">John Murray</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/chad-l-edgar" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Chad L. Edgar</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/felicia-dorothea-hemans" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Felicia Dorothea Hemans</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/andrew-elfenbein" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Andrew Elfenbein</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/arthur-hemans" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Arthur Hemans</a></li></ul></section>Thu, 23 Feb 2012 13:14:58 +0000rc-admin17275 at http://www.rc.umd.eduScepticism and Its Costs: Hemans's Reading of Byronhttp://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/sceptic/costs.html
<div class="field field-name-field-published field-type-date field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="collex:date" datatype="gYearMonth"><span class="date-display-single" property="collex:date" datatype="gYearMonth" content="2004-01-01T00:00:00-05:00">January 2004</span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><table width="640" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" align="center">
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<h2>Scepticism and Its Costs: Hemans's Reading of Byron</h2>
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<p class="title2">Nanora Sweet</p>
<p class="nolineheight">Conference Paper for Byron Society<br/>
Special Session on Byron, Skepticism, and Materialism<br/>
Organized by Terence Hoagwood, Texas A &amp; M University<br/>
Modern Language Association Annual Convention<br/>
San Diego, 28 December 1994<br/>
Edited 23 December 2000<br/>
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<li>I want to talk about religious scepticism as a subject for debate in the poetry of the years just before and after Waterloo. More specifically, I want to talk about the very interested debate over scepticism between the period's most popular male and female poets, Lord Byron and Felicia Hemans (Hemans's dates are 1793 - 1835). I'll approach this by talking first about historical context and its material effects on these poets and their work; second about the political and cultural terms that encode and ultimately destabilize this debate: empire and republic, Hellenism and Orientalism; third about the debate itself, where the poets' interested positions play themselves out in cultural and intertextual terms. While Byron is concerned for the sacrifice of young men at the altar of orthodox belief as sanctioned by belief in an afterlife, Hemans is concerned for the sacrifice of women and children at the altar of scepticism about that belief. I'd like to suggest, however, that taken together, these poets offer a scepticism that can become their culture's well-founded disbelief about itself.<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>First, the historical moment of Waterloo and its power to shape the careers of these two best-selling poets in very parallel ways: Byron's and Hemans's careers alike were launched and fostered by Whig opposition to the Napoleonic Wars; likewise, their middle-period work was published by the officially Tory John Murray. It was Murray's correspondence with the exiled Byron and his book mailings to the poet that promoted the textual relationship between Hemans and Byron that would culminate in the 1820 battle over scepticism. In 1816, for instance, Murray published Hemans's first adult volume, <em>The Restoration of the Works of Art to Italy</em>; Byron writes that he will carry it into Italy with him and that it is "a good poem&#8212;very" (<em>Byron's Letters and Journals</em> 5: 108). <em>Childe Harold</em> 4 cements the consensus between the poets in favor of Italian republicanism, and it also borrows from Hemans's poem the large female figurations of personal and political grief and hope. Waterloo, however, put an end to a Whig opposition which had nourished the republican poems of both poets, and Tory consensus-building came instead to dominate political language and the politicized press.<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>Post-war changes put pressure on these poets' domestic as well as professional lives, handing them oddly similar marital separations (Hemans's in 1818): in each case, the husbands decamp for affordable Italy and the wives stay behind in Britain to manage family. Captain Hemans was literally demobilized by Waterloo, Byron culturally so. The press's post-war attacks on Byron as a dangerous moral and religious sceptic were part of Tory consensus-building, and Hemans's growing participation in these attacks paid bills for her and, as well, expressed her reading of history's liability for the widows and orphans that it makes. Both husbands, then, were in flight from their Tory-enlisted wives and the financial liabilities that (in Hemans's case, with five sons to be educated) mandated that enlistment. Hemans soon was writing under the sponsorship of Tory literati associated with the <em>Quarterly Review</em>, especially Reginald Heber and H.H. Milman.<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>Second, the historical and cultural terms in which the debate over scepticism took place: As Elie Hal&#233;vy has so well shown (in <em>The Liberal Awakening</em>), the moment 1815 to 1820 was bracketed in the terms <em>empire</em> and <em>republic</em>, in 1815 the defeat of one empire and the ascendancy of another, in 1820 the anti-imperial revolts in the Mediterranean that called on Britain to declare itself as either republican or imperial (or&#8212;both). In their Italianate poems, Hemans and Byron had concurred over the part that Italian republicanism should play in guiding Britain's post-war governance. In their subsequent conflict over matters of scepticism and faith, they were, in effect, debating which ideology could best inform a post-war, post-imperial republic.<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>This is not the place to discuss in detail the Carbonari and Risorgimento movements that flowed from these poets' engagement with Italianate republicanism. I have covered that elsewhere (in <i>The Bowl of Liberty</i>), where I locate the Risorgimento transnationally and illustrate its motility in Percy Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" and Felicia Hemans's "The Voice of Spring." But it is worth noting that <em>The Sceptic</em> alludes to Byron's <i>The Prisoner of Chillon</i> whose hero is Fran&#231;ois de Bonnivard, a Genevan republican imprisoned by the Duke of Savoy,
<blockquote>He, who hath pin'd in dungeons, midst the shade<br/>
Of such deep night as man for man hath made,<br/>
Thro' lingering years; if call'd at length to be,<br/>
Once more, by nature's boundless charter, free,<br/>
Shrinks feebly back, the blaze of noon to shun,<br/>
Fainting at day, and blasted by the sun!<br/>
(<a href="/editions/sceptic/poem.html#165">Go to <i>The Sceptic</i>, line 165</a>)<br/></blockquote>
</li>
<li>Hemans thus reminds Byron of the republican topos they shared, Swiss resistance to external conquest (see her "The League of the Alps" and the "Song of the Battle of Morgarten").<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>If, Switzerland and Italy serve the post-Waterloo period as sites of Risorgimento plots and politics, Greece becomes the site of debate over republican ideology&#8212;over matters, that is, of scepticism and faith&#8212;a Greece which is culturally both Hellenic and Orientalist. Scepticism and syncretism alike are the Romantic results of this engagement with Greece; I discuss Hemans's experiment with syncretism elsewhere (<a href="/praxis/passions/sweet/sweet.html">Go to Romantic Circles Praxis Series essay</a>) and speak only of scepticism here. Clearly, Byron adopts Athens and the Acropolis as his iconic site in these matters&#8212;the site where the deliberative practices that might renew European and British republicanism were modeled by Socratic scepticism. Just as clearly, Hemans contests the recoverability of the Athenian model. For both poets, in any case, material desires and interests always subject the discourse of Greek republicanism to Orientalist displacement and reversal. The result is that Byron's and Hemans's positions on scepticism are always produced by culturally-crossed sites: for Byron, an Athens always under Orientalist (Hellenistic or Muslim) degradation; and for Hemans, a Jerusalem whose Hebraic orthodoxy is always being reconstituted as a deliberative (Italian or Greek) city-state.<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>Third, the interested and culturally-mediated arguments that make up Byron's and Hemans's debate over religious scepticism: texts to be discussed include Byron's <em>The Curse of Minerva</em> which declares the Athenian Hellenism (and which is reprised in <em>Childe Harold</em> 2) and Hemans's 1817 <em>Modern Greece</em> which undermines that construction. They include Byron's <em>Childe Harold</em> 2 and "The Destruction of Sennacherib" which experiment in Hellenic scepticism under pressure from Orientalist or Hebraic faith and Hemans's 1819 "Heliodorus in the Temple" and 1820 <em>The Sceptic</em> which recover Hebraic orthodoxy but recast it in terms of Mediterranean republicanism.<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>Briefly, <em>The Curse of Minerva</em> early celebrates the sceptical Socrates as Athena's "Wisest son," "Him that scorned to fear or fly,/ Who lived and died as none can live or die"&#8212;and late puts the republican question to a wartime Britain whose deliberations are failing for lack of such "wise sons": "Then in the Senates of your sinking state/ Show me the man whose counsels may have weight." Byron's poem of course uses the perfidious plundering of the Acropolis by Lord Elgin to represent Britain's betrayal of republicanism. In her anonymous 1817 <em>Modern Greece</em>, Hemans adopts the same iconography in order to make a sceptical point of her own about Byron's reification of Athens. Her Greece is pointedly a leveled and commercial "modern" one, its Acropolis a pastel-penciled representation, its Athens possible now in Britain if anywhere. Byron fired off several put-downs of this poem in a letter to Murray, including that there is no "modern Greece" (<em>LBJ</em> 5: 263).<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>Canto 2 (in stanzas 1-9) of <em>Childe Harold's Pilgrimage</em> codifies Greece as the site of religious scepticism for Byron (<a href="/editions/sceptic/Pilgrimage.html#canto2">Go to <em>Childe Harold's Pilgrimage</em> ~Canto 2</a>). It also reveals that this scepticism comes in the service of Byron's commitment to young men and their fortunes and that it can be undone by that same interest. Orthodoxies may change, the passage says, but always they sacrifice their own, either the lives of young men (in war and under repression) or their desires (especially the homoerotic ones that underlie the canto's stanza 9). Stanza 7 contends that, with his sceptic motto "All that we know is, nothing can be known," "Athena's wisest son" Socrates has removed the linchpin from such coercive orthodoxy, the belief in an afterlife. Yet Stanza 8 already begins the undoing of Socrates's scepticism by his suspect followers, "the Sadducee and sophists" who are "madly vain of dubious lore." Phantom-like, theirs corrupts Socratic scepticism, but so does the masculine desire that all along has underwritten scepticism's defense of young men against orthodox enlistment. The grief that Byron will express in stanza 9 over Edleston has already led him to entertain a "Yet if' about the afterlife&#8212;'Yet if . . . there be/ A land of Souls beyond that sable shore."<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>Hemans's <em>Modern Greece</em> has excised Byron's Socrates from history; and in her "Heliodorus" and <em>The Sceptic</em>, she moves to attack his "madly vain" followers, the Sadducees and sophists whose "dubious" company the desiring Byron himself has joined. In a Hellenism that would be deliberative and republican, she suggests, these figures form a singularly predatory and self-confounding crew of imperial hangers-on.<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>In her 1819 "Heliodorus in the Temple" (from <em>Tales and Historic Scenes</em>) Hemans displaces Socratic Athens with Maccabean Jerusalem as a model city-state and displaces Byron's treatment of youth and sacrifice with her own, differently gendered, version of the same, appropriately written in Venus and Adonis stanzas. Hemans's is a Jerusalem with a difference, a city-state resistant to empire, a temple state to be sure yet one committed, not to the sacrifice of the young, but the protection of widows and orphans. Hemans depicts Maccabean Jerusalem as a republic in struggle against the Seleucid empire. This anti-imperial struggle takes place internally as well as externally, because Hellenized Jews known as Sadducees plunder the Temple's treasury to pay for their imperial luxuries. Worldly, educated, sceptical, they promote gymnasium education and eschew such religious innovations as belief in personal immortality and apocalyptic sanctions. These they leave to the newer zealot faction, the Pharisees.<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>For "Heliodorus in the Temple," Hemans chooses her text from the Pharisitical second book of <em>Maccabees</em> (chapter 3), in which the Sadducee Heliodorus comes to Jerusalem's temple with an imperial decree to raid its treasury "committed of trust." Pressing her materially interested case, Hemans clarifies that in this treasury "are laid/ The orphan's portion, and the widow's store." Neither wailing women nor ranks of priests can stop Heliodorus "the spoiler" from violating temple sanctuary, so well trained is he as a Greek sceptic. So a Pharisitical innovation must prevent him instead, an apocalyptic horse and rider that smite "th'oppressor" down. In visiting this sanction on the corrupt sceptic, Hemans boldly borrows from Byron's own Hebraic avenger in "The Destruction of Sennacherib." Asking for the "Angel of God! that through th'Assyrian host . . .Didst pass triumphant in avenging power," she alludes to Byron's 1815 "Hebrew Melody."<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>In her 1820 pamphlet poem <em>The Sceptic</em>, Hemans shifts her target from an ancient Sadducee to "the Sophists" of contemporary British culture (<a href="/editions/sceptic/poem.html#1">Go to <i>The Sceptic</i>, line 1</a>). Dressing her "cold Sceptic"/"cold Sophist" in Petrarchan and Promethean trappings and alluding freely to Byron's biography, Hemans leaves little doubt that her target is Byron (and, by association, Shelley). The <em>Quarterly Review</em> indeed praises this poem as a force against "the most dangerous writer of the present day" (October 1820; the reviewer, John Taylor Coleridge). This poem in 550 lines of running pentameter couplets is indeed a sustained polemic against Byronic scepticism on temporal and theological grounds, one spliced with <em>ad hominem</em> attacks yet also graced with sisterly concern for this poet who spurns "a brighter state" for a "quicksand" earth. Still concerned for those at risk from historical accident and dependent on the temple's treasury trust, Hemans here focuses on the sanctions that protect or indemnify that trust, especially the belief in an afterlife. She presses her arguments in terms of the personal and poetic history that she and Byron share, using that intertwined history to undo Byron's sceptical position from within.<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>Hemans points early to Byron's separation crisis ("the hour of wrath,/ When burst th' o'erwhelming vials on thy path") (<a href="/editions/sceptic/poem.html#265">Go to <i>The Sceptic</i>, line 269</a>) and her own, suggesting that, had he let God support him in that personal moment, the world might have been spared the ever-reproduced Byronic persona, the "ruin'd tenement", with those showy losses that "we shrink from, vainly to forget." Death, Hemans reminds the sceptic Promethean, is not played out before "gazing nations" by a hero who, "undismayed amidst the tears of all,/. . .folds his mantle, regally to fall." All too often, in death we are "obscure, and lone"; and our death is like the falling "light leaf" that a "bears some trembling insect's little world of cares." For this "lone sufferer," belief in an afterlife is belief in the human link that can also be represented by a deathbed comforter (<a href="/editions/sceptic/poem.html#450">Go to <i>The Sceptic</i>, line 451</a>).<br/>
<br/></li>
<li><em>The Sceptic's</em> figure of the deathbed comforter recalls Byron's own feminine icon of deathbed watch in <em>Childe Harold</em> 4.72, "Iris," "Like Hope upon a deathbed," the rainbow bearing "serene/ Its brilliant hues with all their beams unshorn": "Love watching Madness with unalterable mien." This heroic comforter, I've argued before, was prompted in Byron by Hemans's own <i>The Restoration of the <em>Works</em></i> <em>of Art to Italy</em>. Hemans charges now that Byron has hamstrung this "faithful cherub," their shared figure: "Thou hast shorn her plume,/ That might have raised thee far above the tomb" (<a href="/editions/sceptic/poem.html#45">Go to <i>The Sceptic</i>, line 49</a>). Hemans's argument in <em>The Sceptic</em>, then, presses past the personal sufferings of women and their children and into the ideological sanctions&#8212;like one's "Hope" for an afterlife&#8212;that in some way address or redress those sufferings. To discount the afterlife is to discount the promises made to women and their dependents and the ongoing need to address, or enforce them. Discounting those promises can lead, as in "Heliodorus," to the raiding of what reserves are available for widows and orphans. If the material needs of women and their dependents cannot be addressed, an afterlife might redress them; but in so doing, it would reveal the tenuous dispensation offered women and children in this life.<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>When the sceptic discounts the afterlife, then, he threatens the promises made to women under a marriage system built on displacement and threatens the sanctions needed to enforce those promises. The sceptic's "vain philosophy" thus "mocks" love&#8212;mocks, that is, the promises made to women and to children, a group that after all includes everyone, including Byron, subject to marital and parental accident. Would the sceptic himself, then, "dare to <em>love</em>," asks Hemans in a challenge that is both ethical and logical (<a href="/editions/sceptic/poem.html#70">Go to <i>The Sceptic</i>, line 71</a>).<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>In <em>The Sceptic</em>, death is not merely human loss but a fearsome event, a powerful apocalyptic sanction. Five of <em>The Sceptic's</em> six footnotes cite an Old Testament God before whom people "flee" and "tremble" (<a href="/editions/sceptic/poem.html#n1a">Go to <em>The Sceptic</em>, Notes</a>). Like the sanctions against "Heliodorus," this death is a "swift pale horse" with a "mighty rider" that prefigures "the day of terror" or Judgement with its "final doom." Hemans's poem begins to identify this apocalyptic "Chastener" Death with the God who sends him; and this conflation leads Hemans into a line of argument that poses its own sceptical questions about the nature of a death-dealing God: without faith in an afterlife and the Christ who is its emblem, Hemans asks,
<blockquote>Should we not wither at the Chastener's look,<br/>
Should we not sink beneath our God's rebuke,<br/>
When o'er our heads the desolating blast,<br/>
Fraught with inscrutable decrees, hath passd,<br/>
And the stern power who seeks the noblest prey,<br/>
Hath call'd our fairest and our best away?<br/>
(<a href="/editions/sceptic/poem.html#455">Go to <i>The Sceptic</i>, line 461</a>)<br/></blockquote>
</li>
<li>Would we not all be decimated, then, but for the sacrifice in which Christ has propitiated this Death, this God? If we pause at this characterization of God, we recognize that this heavenly father exacts the sacrifice of his son in ways that raise concerns in other texts by Byron and by Hemans as well (I'm thinking of her <em>The Siege of Valencia</em>, <em>A Tale of the Secret Tribunal</em>, and <em>The Vespers of Palermo</em>). In those plots, son-sacrifice is either a cruel instrument of policy or the fulfillment of a revenge ethic; and in these texts, such sacrifice is urgently critiqued as a form of nihilism. How different is the God accepted as orthodox in <em>The Sceptic</em> from these cruel or at the least hapless fathers?<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>It is just after Hemans's portrait of God as Death that she, very briefly, lifts the veil of her ideology from the world of feminine desire that it contains. In this disruptive moment, the poem has shifted almost without notice from the sacrifice of Christ to the loss in 1817 of Princess Charlotte in childbed; it has turned to a royal daughter whose death meets no divine design, only "inscrutable decrees." Then, the poem asks,
<blockquote>Should we not madden, when our eyes behold<br/>
All that we lov'd in marble stillness cold, . . .?<br/>
But for the promise, all shall yet be well,<br/>
Would not the spirit in its pangs rebel,<br/>
Beneath such clouds as darken'd, when the hand<br/>
Of wrath lay heavy on our prostrate land. . .?<br/>
(<a href="/editions/sceptic/poem.html#455">Go to <em>The Sceptic</em>, line 457</a>)</blockquote>
It is the death of an unexceptionable mother in service of the state that brings to the poem's surface such resistant words as "madden" and "rebel."<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>Not surprisingly, just as Hemans had critiqued Byron for shoddiness and sophistry in <em>The Sceptic</em>, Byron criticized this poem for its rhetoric ("too stiltified and apostrophic") and its logic (people died well prior to the Christian dispensation; BLJ 7: 113). But Byron has already corrupted scepticism with the cynicism of the Sadducee and sophist and the desire of the lover for reunion. And Hemans has exposed a killing belief to a very Byronic scepticism about needless sacrifice. So in the end the sceptical debate engaged both writers in a broader and more nuanced project about materialism and scepticism. Arguably, Byron's scepticism had its impact on Hemans, for the cruelty of sanctions that demand sacrificial death for their fulfillment is no more lost on her than on him. It could also be argued that in the event Hemans fields a scepticism more devastating than Byron's: for while his concerns a hypothetical afterlife, hers concerns the workings of a very material present one. In her, the Tory and radical positions on scepticism meet and create a third, critical, perhaps feminist position that ultimately eludes both sides.</li>
</ol>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<hr width="100%" size="1"/>
<h4>Works Cited</h4>
<p class="hang">Byron, Lord. <em>Byron's Letters and Journals</em>. Ed. Leslie A. Marchand. 12 vols. London: Murray, 1973-1982.</p>
<p class="hang">---. <em>The Complete Poetical Works</em>. Eds. Jerome J. McGann and Barry Weller. 7 vols. New York: Oxford UP, 1980-1993.</p>
<p class="hang">Hal&#233;vy, Elie. <em>The Liberal Awakening</em>: 1815-1830. 1923. Trans. E. J. Watkin. New York: Barnes, 1961. Vol. 2 of <em>A History of the English People in the Nineteenth Century</em>. 6 vols.</p>
<p class="hang">Hemans, Felicia. "Heliodorus at the Temple." <em>Felicia Hemans: Selected Poems, Letters, Reception Materials</em>. Ed. Susan J. Wolfson. Princeton, NJ: Princeton U P, 2000. [p. 148].</p>
<p class="hang">Hemans, Felicia Dorothea Browne. <em>The Sceptic; A Poem</em>. London: John Murray, 1820. <em>British Women Romantic Poets Project</em>. Ed. Khosh. Kohler Collection, Shields Library, U of California, Davis, 1998. 23 Dec. 2000. "The Sceptic; A Poem" on British Women Romantic Poets 1789 - 1832.</p>
<p class="hang">Sweet, Nanora. <i>The Bowl of Liberty: Felicia Hemans and the Romantic Mediterranean</i>. Diss. U of Michigan. 1993.</p>
<p class="hang">---. "Hemans, Heber, and <em>Superstition and Revelation</em>: Experiment and Orthodoxy at the Scene of Writing." <em>Romantic Passions</em>, ed. Elizabeth Fay. <em>Romantic Praxis Series, Romantic Circles Website;</em> March 1998.<br/>
<br/></p>
</td>
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</table>
</div></div></div><section class="field field-name-field-parent-section field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Section:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/node/31535">Electronic Editions</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-resource-index field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Resource:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/editions/sceptic/index.html">The Sceptic; A Poem: A Hemans-Byron Dialogue</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-authored-by-secondary- field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Authored by (Secondary):&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/person/sweet-nanora">Sweet, Nanora</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/percy-bysshe-shelley-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Percy Bysshe Shelley</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/hume" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Hume</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1531" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Peterloo Massacre</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1759" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">skepticism</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/gibbon" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Gibbon</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/2736" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Quarterly Review</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4706" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Sceptic</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4707" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Manfred</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4708" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Childe Harold&#039;s Pilgrimage</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4709" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">woman poet</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/murray" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Murray</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4711" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">sceptic</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4712" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">skeptic</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4713" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">sceptical</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/title/common-sense" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Common Sense</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4715" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Forest Sanctuary</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4716" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Domestic Affections</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4717" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">poetic femininity</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4718" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">bluestocking</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4719" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">heterodoxy</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4720" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">epideictic</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4721" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">didactic</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/jeffrey-walker" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jeffrey Walker</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/bossuet" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Bossuet</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4724" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">1819</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4725" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">life after death</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-52 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Section:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/section/editions/the-sceptic-a-hemans-byron-dialogue" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Sceptic: A Hemans-Byron Dialogue</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-city-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">City:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/city/reading" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Reading</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/city/london" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">London</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/city/oxford" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Oxford</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-person-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Person:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/john-murray" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">John Murray</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/felicia-dorothea-hemans" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Felicia Dorothea Hemans</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/leslie-marchand-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Leslie A. Marchand</a></li></ul></section>Thu, 23 Feb 2012 13:14:39 +0000rc-admin17274 at http://www.rc.umd.eduContesting the Heterodoxy: Mrs. Hemans vs. Lord Byronhttp://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/sceptic/contestingheterodoxy.html
<div class="field field-name-field-published field-type-date field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="collex:date" datatype="gYearMonth"><span class="date-display-single" property="collex:date" datatype="gYearMonth" content="2004-01-01T00:00:00-05:00">January 2004</span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><div class="center">
<h2 align="left">Contesting the Heterodoxy: Mrs. Hemans vs. Lord Byron</h2>
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<div align="left">
<h4>Andrew Elfenbein</h4>
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<div align="left"><i>Conference paper for the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism Western Ontario, August 1993.<br/></i><br/>
</div>
<ol>
<li>
<div align="left">When Felicia Hemans described receiving the Royal Society of Literature's annual prize for her poem <em>Dartmoor</em>, she noted that her son "sprang up from his Latin exercise and shouted aloud, 'Now, I am sure mamma is a better poet than Lord Byron!"' In her memoir of the poet, Hemans's sister, Harriett Hughes, appended an anxious footnote to this comment: "It is scarcely necessary to remark, that the comparison originated solely with the boy himself."<a href="#n1">[1]</a> Hughes suggested that it would have been an offence against female modesty for Hemans to have declared herself a better poet than Byron, or at least to have stated it so baldly. Yet if Hemans never openly announced her poetic superiority to Byron, she insistently set herself against him in her poetry by implying that her perceived moral superiority to him translated into aesthetic superiority as well.<br/>
<br/></div>
</li>
<li>
<div align="left">Hemans's contest with Byron had two sides: her revision of motifs from his poems and her implicit contest with him over the nature of literary language itself. Byron was more struck by the second of the two because in 1820 he criticized her "false stilted trashy style," which seemed to him "a mixture of all the styles of the day."<a href="#n2">[2]</a> His indictment of Hemans was also partly an indictment of himself, since, as he admitted, one of the styles that she imitated was his own. But by 1820 he could criticize her because he had largely, though never entirely, abandoned the sentimental diction of his earlier romances. Hemans, in contrast, was driving it to an extreme. As Walter Scott noted, "Mrs. Hemans is somewhat too poetical for my taste&#8212;too many flowers I mean, and too little fruit."<a href="#n3">[3]</a><br/>
<br/></div>
</li>
<li>
<div align="left">Although this floweriness has been a stumbling-block for modern critics, its cliched familiarity suggests how influential it was in the nineteenth century. Hemans's style became as popular as it did because it offered a distinctively poetic language to accompany the growing autonomy of poetry. As High Culture for the middle classes increasingly separated itself from everyday life and language, her strenuous "poeticity" signaled that her work belonged to that special, otherworldly cultural realm. To buy her poetry was to buy a product that advertised itself as art. Her flowery style succeeded where that of other Romantic poets, most notably Keats, had failed. When work whose language announced itself as distinctively poetic came from a lower-middle-class writer like Keats, critics savaged it, but when it came from a woman, they praised it enthusiastically.<br/>
<br/></div>
</li>
<li>
<div align="left">Gender worked where class had not.<a href="#n4">[4]</a> As for Byron, even though Hemans's style drew heavily on his own, she earned praise for it as Byron did not. As his career progressed, his style received increasingly less attention because his work was supposed to be interesting less as literature than as a revelation of "the real Byron." Hemans, in contrast, avoided poetry that her contemporaries might read as confessional. While Byron became famous as a personality, she became famous as a "Poet."<br/>
<br/></div>
</li>
<li>
<div align="left">A comparison of Byron and Hemans can begin by noting that failed marriages took their careers in opposite directions. Byron's poetry loudly broadcasted Lady Byron's scandalous desertion of him, especially in "Fare Thee Well!". Like his earlier tales, this lyric was just scandalous enough to arouse interest, but not enough to alienate most respectable readers. For Hemans, in contrast, the failure of her marriage was no subject for poetry. Left to support herself, she wrote for money, which meant that she had little choice but to appeal to the audience that Byron could flirt with offending. Her readers and her situation as a female author largely determined her poetry's pious, ultra-respectable viewpoint before she ever set pen to paper. Readers eager for Byronic scandalousness would have been shocked if a woman had voiced it.<br/>
<br/></div>
</li>
<li>
<div align="left">Yet all was not as conventional as it seemed. Hundreds of women had written poetry before Hemans, but she was one of the first to make her living largely through poetry. The more conventional modes for a woman needing to support herself had been translations, novels, or plays. Poetry was hardly the most profitable mode a writer could choose, and earlier female poets like Charlotte Smith and Mary Robinson had turned to novels when economic need grew pressing. Hemans's success as a poet depended on new developments in the book trade. First, reviews and annuals appeared that paid generously for poetry; Hemans informed one editor, "I have never been accustomed to receive less than ten guineas a sheet."<a href="#n5">[5]</a> Second, the verse romances of Scott and Byron increased the profitability of poetry by tapping the novel-reading audience. Although Hemans eventually became best known for short lyrics, the works that initially made her name were longer pieces designed to appeal to these readers. She avoided the tradition of female lyricists, especially that represented by the Della Cruscans. One editor was asked to ensure that her name appeared as "Mrs. Hemans" because "that infelix <em>Felicia</em> is the subject of so many animadversions and allusions to Rosa Matilda, Laura Maria, and all the Della Cruscan tribe, that I am determined wholly to bid it good-bye."<a href="#n6">[6]</a> Instead of small, modest lyrics, she ventured substantial poems, often based on historical or Biblical subjects, that dealt with events of public significance.<br/>
<br/></div>
</li>
<li>
<div align="left">She began writing her verse romances at the same moment that Byron stopped writing his. In so doing, he also abandoned his cozy relation to his respectable readers, since later works like <em>Cain</em> and <em>Don Juan</em> openly attacked British pieties. They became profitable less for John Murray than for the radical publishers who pirated them and sold thousands of copies, particularly of <em>Don Juan</em>, to the working classes. As Byron's working-class audience grew, his middle-class one was supposedly shrinking. The official line of a review like the <em>Christian Observer</em> in 1825 was that Byron should be boycotted because a boycott "would shew, that, with a British public, no superiority of rank or intellect can screen an impious and licentious author from the just punishment of being reprobated, and consigned to oblivion."<a href="#n7">[7]</a> Female readers in particular avoided later works like <em>Cain</em> and <em>Don Juan</em>, or at least felt guilty about reading them.<br/>
<br/></div>
</li>
<li>
<div align="left">Hemans in the 1820s faced the challenge of continuing the Byronic genre of the verse romance when Byron himself seemed to be going wholly to the bad. She met the challenge by rewriting Byronic romance from the point of view of normative femininity. Several critics have commented on the gendering of Hemans's voice, but I want to emphasize the differences between her poetic femininity and that of her predecessors.<a href="#n8">[8]</a> The gender of female poets had always mattered for how they were read, but gender for Hemans mattered differently. The feminine voice of earlier poets was associated with subject matter, like domesticity, motherhood, or female education, or with minor genres, like the sonnet or fable. In the cases where female poets wrote on public subjects in more ambitious genres, they put themselves at risk of being seen as bluestockings who had unsexed themselves by trespassing on masculine concerns.<br/>
<br/></div>
</li>
<li>
<div align="left">With Hemans, the case was different. When I first came to read her work, I expected that, like the works of her predecessors, it would be about women and issues conventionally gendered as feminine. I did not find quite what I expected. She did write many poems, as in <em>Records of Woman</em> and <em>Songs of the Affections,</em> about feminized experience and sentiments. But she also wrote works that do not fit so obviously into prior conventions of femininity, such as theological poems like <i>The Sceptic</i> and "Superstition and Revelation," historical narratives like "The League of the Alps," poems on topical issues like <i>The Restoration of the Works of Art to Italy</i>, and even battle songs. These are not just poems about women and domesticity. Her subject matter pointedly ranges beyond concerns previously designated as feminine.<br/>
<br/></div>
</li>
<li>
<div align="left">Nevertheless, as many critics have emphasized, all Hemans's contemporaries treated her work as distinctively feminine. The puzzle is how she was able to address such a wide range of issues without being attacked as a bluestocking. The answer lies in the expanding borders of femininity at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Hemans's longer works participated in a new development in the construction of gender: the politics of normative femininity. Much attention has been given to how novels, conduct books, and tracts on female education segregated women from public life by disseminating their role as pious guardians of domesticity. Far less has been given to the ways in which this seemingly limited role provided some women with a platform for public, political expression. The historian Linda Colley has demonstrated that, by the end of the eighteenth century and beginning of the nineteenth, women were using the conservative concept of a female role to justify such political activities as addressing armies, endowing monuments to public figures, demonstrating in support of Queen Caroline, and signing petitions to Parliament.<a href="#n9">[9]</a> In 1829, for example, Lord Eldon "produced an anti-Catholic petition in the House of Lords signed 'by a great many ladies"' (Colley p. 279).<br/>
<br/></div>
</li>
<li>
<div align="left">Colley emphasizes how politically empowering the conservative concept of the female role proved to be, even though it seemed designed to exclude women from public life. If women were indeed supposed to be "embodiments of virtue and high morality," then they had a duty to speak out on issues of public importance in order to "inspire their menfolk to proper political actions" (p. 277). For Hemans to have narrowed her work to conventionally feminine topics would have been to miss the larger range of concerns for which women were taking responsibility. The participation of women in politics had developed enough by the 1820s that writing as a woman no longer meant writing solely about domesticity, children, and sentiment, but about religion, nationalism, and history as well.<br/>
<br/></div>
</li>
<li>
<div align="left">Byron was a particularly threatening figure for this new politics of femininity, since the attacks in his later works on religion and monarchy threatened the grounds on which such women had gained their political voice, however limited it may have been. One reviewer explicitly connected Byron's religious heterodoxy to his degraded representations of women: "The same proud hardness of heart which makes the author of <em>Don Juan</em> a despiser of the Faith for which his fathers bled, has rendered him a scorner of the better part of Woman."<a href="#n10">[10]</a> From this conservative viewpoint, Byron's religious heterodoxy went hand in hand with his attack on the female character, since orthodox Anglicanism was supposed to uphold the exalted character of Woman. Any female writer who took the politics of normative femininity seriously would have to counter the impression that Byron had created.<br/>
<br/></div>
</li>
<li>
<div align="left">Hemans thought that her best poem was <em>The Forest Sanctuary</em>; it was published in 1825 and was popular enough to have gone into a second edition by 1829. In it, she met Byron on his own generic ground, the verse romance, and rewrote Byronic motifs to counter his heterodoxy. It might seem that, as a woman, she would revise Byron most of all by countering his representation of women. To a degree, her poem does so, yet its principle focus is not gender, but religion. Rather than attacking Byron's atheism, she attacked what was seen as a far more pressing threat to the Established Church in the 1820s: Roman Catholicism. She based her poem on an article by Blanco White in the <em>Quarterly Review</em> in which he warned the British public about Spanish liberals and criticized Catholicism for imprisoning Spain in superstition. By adapting this article, she placed her work within the politics of anti-Catholicism that inspired so many women in the 1820s, to the degree that some even signed petitions to Parliament.<a href="#n11">[11]</a> Her poem united a literary polemic against Byron with a political one against Catholicism, to give narrative expression to the politics of normative femininity.<br/>
<br/></div>
</li>
<li>
<div align="left">While <em>The Forest Sanctuary</em> revises several Byronic motifs, the two most prominent are the figure of the rebellious Byronic hero and the heroine who dies from grief at the fate of her beloved. Hemans's hero, like Byron's Manfred or Cain, strikes out against established religion and is consequently exiled from his community. Yet where Byron's heroes reject any form of established religion, the rebellion of Hemans's hero is more specific. He is a sixteenth-century Spaniard who, horrified by the spectacle of an auto-da-fe, abjures Catholicism. Upon going to a "mighty minster, dim, and proud, and vast" (I.lxxvii), he receives no inspiration until he has a vision of Christ. It convinces him of the emptiness of the institutionalized Catholicism represented by the "minster," and he relearns his faith "from the book whose words are grav'd in light" (II.iv). Although Hemans does not specify the religion to which he converts, it looks much like early nineteenth-century Anglicanism, through she generalizes her descriptions enough that they would not alienate Dissenting readers either. In presenting nineteenth-century British religion as the spontaneous revelation of a sixteenth-century Spaniard, she transforms the Byronic hero's familiar turn away from established religious norms into a turn toward orthodoxy.<br/>
<br/></div>
</li>
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<div align="left">Because the Spaniard is unable to "shout out Heaven's air with falsehood's mask," he is thrown into a "grave-like cell" (II.v), separated from his wife and children. His time in jail seems modeled specifically on the experiences of Byron's Bonnivard in <em>The Prisoner of Chillon</em>, that problematic exemplar of the "Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind." Yet Hemans manipulates British anti-Catholic sentiment in order to make her hero into a Protestant paragon. What is represented as a rebellion within the terms of the poem, the hero's apostasy from Catholicism, would have been seen as a move toward orthodoxy for Hemans's Protestant readers. She uses the element of religious rebellion intrinsic to the Protestant Church itself to counter Byron's heterodoxy with a rebellion that is not really a rebellion.<br/>
<br/></div>
</li>
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<div align="left">In Byron's poetry, the hero's rebelliousness usually has bad results for the heroine. Hemans's poem goes even further: all three female characters die, a fate that has been a crux for interpreters who want to see her as affirming female experience. One critic suggests that the futility of "female love, devotion and self-sacrifice" in Hemans's poems functions to collapse domestic ideology from within.<a href="#n12">[12]</a> While I recognize the futility associated with female endeavor in Hemans, I am hesitant to see it as necessarily subversive because she so quickly assimilates it to the need for Christian belief. Nevertheless, the fate of women in <em>The Forest Sanctuary</em> lays bare a potential conflict between two elements of the normative female role: religious belief and domestic obedience. In the poem's first book, the Spaniard witnesses the deaths of Theresa and Inez, who, with their brother, are the Protestant heretics condemned to be burned. Conversion has led both sisters to rebel against their paternal home: "Alas, that lonely father! doom'd to pine / For sounds departed in his life's decline" (I.xxxii). Far from being rigorously dutiful, they have shamed the name that "a hundred chiefs had borne" (I.xxxii). Instead, Theresa remains loyal to her brother, "whose hand had led [her] to the source of truth, / Where [her] glad soul from earth was purified" (I.xxxviii). Although the narrator praises her because "her life is ever twin'd / With other lives" (I.xxxvii), Hemans's plot suggests that the issues are not quite so simple. Religious faith may demand forsaking bonds even as sacred as those between father and daughter.<br/>
<br/></div>
</li>
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<div align="left">The conflict between love and faith is even more prominent for the other two female characters, Theresa's sister Inez and the Spaniard's wife Leonor. As Inez is about to be burned, her beloved suddenly appears to her. Faced with the choice between her love and her loyalty to her faith, she dies of a broken heart before she reaches the flames. Yet even as Hemans portrays the fatal effects of what she calls "the strife / Of love, faith, fear, and that vain dream of life" (I.lxi), she emphasizes that faith is ultimately the right choice. Inez is praised for not having "cast away / [Her] hope in [her] last hour" (I.lxiii), despite the pull of earthly love.<br/>
<br/></div>
</li>
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<div align="left">The narrator's wife Leonor undergoes an even more vivid version of Inez's conflict between love and faith. Although she is devoted to her husband, she dies during their voyage from Spain to North America because she cannot reconcile herself to his conversion: "Fall'n, fall'n I seem'd&#8212;yet, oh! not less belov'd, / Tho' from thy love was pluck'd the early pride" (II.xxxix). For her, religious faith must not subside before marital fidelity. Like Inez, she faces a choice between love and faith that leaves her no outlet but death. Evaluating Leonor may be the central puzzle of <em>The Forest Sanctuary</em>, because Hemans seems to suggest that it is better for a woman to remain faithful to her religion, even if it is wrong, than to alter it in accordance with that of her husband.<a href="#n13">[13]</a> While the narrator criticizes Leonor for her "gloomy faith," Hemans suggests that her persistence is heroic insofar as it demonstrates her capability to put spiritual concerns above earthly ones.<a href="#n14">[14]</a><br/>
<br/></div>
</li>
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<div align="left">The ambiguities surrounding Leonor's death test how much Hemans may criticize the conservative order that she endorses. As several critics have noted, relations between men and women are rarely happy in her work. Her representation of Inez and Leonor may suggest that this unhappiness arises from basic contradictions in the loyalties that women are supposed to have. Yet the sentimental gratification with which she surrounds their deaths tempers the potentially critical impulse in her representations. Whatever earthly troubles these characters may have, they all receive their reward in heaven because they have kept their faith, even if it is wrong, as in Leonor's case.<br/>
<br/></div>
</li>
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<div align="left">Whether or not Hemans's representation of women subverts her conservative ideology, the sheer complexity of the issues surrounding their deaths indicates how completely she has revised Byron. Although Caroline Franklin has demonstrated that Byron's heroines are more complicated than previous critics have generally allowed, early nineteenth-century reviewers found them to be little more than shadows dying for the hero.<a href="#n15">[15]</a> As John Scott wrote, "The female character is reduced [in Byron's poems]...to a certain intense power of communicating delight to man, and awakening enthusiasm in his breast:&#8212;they love, dazzle, and die."<a href="#n16">[16]</a> Hemans's women have considerably more substance than Scott's version of Byron's heroines because they are not defined solely in relation to men. They are literal or figurative martyrs whose loyalty to a higher order leads them to resist even men who would bring them domestic happiness. Though Hemans appropriates from Byron the motif of the dead heroine, she ensures that her women died for what could be perceived as better reasons than his did. She might expect that her representations of women would appeal to her audience because religion had become so closely associated with the exalted role of woman and the ability of some women to find a political voice that so much in their culture seemed designed to suppress.<br/>
<br/></div>
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<div align="left">Thus far, I have emphasized the content of Hemans's poem and its ideological battle against Byron. Yet, as I suggested earlier, her revision of him may be most important for its stylistic results. The reception of <em>The Forest Sanctuary</em> gives some clues as to why her style matters. Several journals reviewed it when it was first published, and the <em>Edinburgh Review</em> featured Francis Jeffrey's discussion of Hemans in 1829 upon the appearance of its second edition.<a href="#n17">[17]</a> The reviewers fell into two camps. The first responded to the poem in terms of its subject matter. <em>The Monthly Magazine</em> panned it because the critic detested Hemans's "commixture of sacred writ with that sort of poetry which is or ought to be intended for the amusement of cultivated minds." <em>The Monthly Review</em>, in contrast, admired her ability to "adopt subjects honourable to her delicacy" (p. 581). The critics in the second camp judged the poem purely in stylistic terms. <em>The Literary Gazette</em> praised her as a "sweet and elegant writer" whose poems manifested "a degree of beauty which will amply reward the reader for an attentive study" (p. 275). According to <em>The Literary Magnet</em>, those who read poetry "for the sake of incident" would find <em>The Forest Sanctuary</em> of "little interest," but those who appreciated "genius and poetical sensibility" would find it full of "those outpourings of the spirit, which have their origin in the best and most glorious feelings at our nature" (p. 289). Jeffrey's essay had nothing to say about Hemans's moral or religious views but praised the "great charm and excellence in her imagery" (p. 37). He maintained that the "the very essence of poetry" demanded that the poet present "such visible objects&#8230;as partake of the character of the emotions he wishes to excite"; for him, Hemans was "eminently a mistress of this poetical secret" (pp. 36-37).<br/>
<br/></div>
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<div align="left">The contrast between the camps is one between treating poetry as a vehicle of moral or religious instruction and treating it as an aesthetic object. For the second camp, the politics of normative femininity disappeared from the evaluation of <em>The Forest Sanctuary</em>. The style of the following stanza, which the <em>Magnet</em> called "exquisite," gives an idea of what they were admiring instead; it describes Inez before her death:
<blockquote>But the dark hours wring forth the hidden might<br/>
Which hath lain bedded in the silent soul,<br/>
A treasure all undreamt of;&#8212;as the night<br/>
Calls out the harmonies of streams that roll<br/>
Unheard by day.&#8212;It seemed as if her breast<br/>
Had hoarded energies, till then suppressed<br/>
Almost with pain, and bursting from control,<br/>
And finding first that hour their pathway free:<br/>
Could a rose brave the storm, such might her emblem be! (I.xxxv)</blockquote>
</div>
<div align="left">This excerpt is a good example of Hemans's style, which is either "false stilted and trashy" or "sweet and elegant," depending on your point of view. It works by piling up poetical effects: an intricate Spenserian stanza with an altered rhyme scheme (ababccbdd), elaborate similes, frequent dashes and exclamation points, and rhetorical questions. Like the epigraphs from Schiller and Coleridge at the beginning of her poem, the accumulation of such effects in stanza after stanza signals the reader that this is poetry in capital letters.<br/>
<br/></div>
</li>
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<div align="left">Banal as Hemans's style may seem to some in the late twentieth century, it was a novelty in the 1820s because it fitted so comfortably into the commodification of poetry as an autonomous art form. As John Guillory has noted in his discussion of Wordsworth's 1802 Preface, the dominance of polite English in the eighteenth century as a standard for defining literariness meant that there was little essential difference between the language of most poetry and that of most prose.<a href="#n18">[18]</a> Yet once polite English had been disseminated widely enough that it could no longer differentiate between higher and lower uses of language, a different marker of literariness emerged: a distinctive style expressing the genius of a particular author. What looked to Byron like a derivative mix of contemporary styles looked to Jeffrey like the mark of Hemans's poetic mastery. Despite these different reactions, both were responding to the same thing: the ostentatious literariness of Hemans's style.<br/>
<br/></div>
</li>
<li>
<div align="left">Hemans's style directly countered the turn that Byron's later poetry had taken. When he engaged overtly polemical and topical themes in works like <em>Cain</em> and <em>Don Juan</em>, he abandoned his earlier sentimentalism for language that was more deliberately prosaic. Part of the outrage of his later works was stylistic: they did not read the way that poetry was supposed to read. Hemans's career, in contrast, grounded the increasingly feminized status of poetry within the book trade in the work of an actual woman. Although Keats's style had seemed absurdly effeminate, her gender naturalized the equation between femininity and the increasingly marginalized genre of poetry. Yet Hemans's style had its disadvantages. One consequence of the growing marginality of poetry was the privileging of lyric as a mode that permitted the purest expression of an author's style. Lyrics best represented high culture as a realm entirely removed from the concerns of ordinary life and speech. As Hemans's career progressed, her greatest critical success came not with ambitious, politicized poems like <em>The Forest Sanctuary</em> but with short lyrics showcasing her style. Their subject matter was far tamer than that of her longer works, but they were more easily consumed as fine art, marked by their distinctively literary language.<br/>
<br/></div>
</li>
<li>
<div align="left">Ultimately, Hemans's literariness worked against her most ambitious poems like <em>The Forest Sanctuary</em> because her language was so overwrought that the plots became difficult to follow. Her biographer noted of one of these longer works that "somewhat of a monotony of coloring is thrown over its scenes by the unchanged employment of a lofty and enriched phraseology."<a href="#n19">[19]</a> Her phraseology was so lofty that two reviewers of <em>The Forest Sanctuary</em> quarreled about exactly what happened in it, and Jeffrey stated bluntly that she "must not venture again on any thing so long as the 'Forest Sanctuary.'" Instead, he praised her as "the most touching and accomplished writer of occasional verses that our literature has yet to boast of" (p. 47). She became a later version of the Della Cruscan lyricists that she had tried so hard to avoid, and the politicized edge of her earlier poetry evaporated. As a lyricist, she became one of the most popular poets on both sides of the Atlantic, and her work was memorized by generations of schoolchildren. Even today as Hemans begins to reappear in anthologies, she is present not as a writer of ambitious poems on religious and political issues but as a writer of lyric.<br/>
<br/></div>
</li>
<li>
<div align="left">The nineteenth-century diminishment of Hemans to a lyricist reflects a gender bias: women supposedly could only write in small forms, while the bigger ones were reserved for the men. Yet attention to gender should not obscure the extent to which her fate was that of much poetry during the century. In works like <em>The Golden Treasury</em>, the Victorians eventually reconstructed all Romanticism in terms of the lyric. As a result, Keats was elevated to a status that would have seemed unlikely during his life. His resurgence may even have depended partly on the taste for "enriched phraseology" that Hemans had created. The decay in her reputation came only when standards of literary language had altered again, so that the floweriness that seemed strikingly expressive in 1820 looked cliched in 1920. By then, however, the antiliterary language of <em>Don Juan</em> could be re-evaluated as Byron's high point, since it supposedly marked most clearly his individual genius.<br/>
<br/></div>
</li>
<li>
<div align="left">My goal in this talk has been to place Hemans's conservatism in historical perspective in relation to Byron's career, the politics of normative femininity, and developments in the role of poetry. I find her work challenging because it demands developing new models for understanding the relation of gender to literature. While the recovery of Hemans's work is only a few years old, the hermeneutic often used in reading her work stems from a foundational text of academic feminism: <em>The Madwoman in the Attic</em>. Its influential paradigm suggests that underneath the conventional veneer that patriarchy imposed on nineteenth-century women writers lie signs of rebellion against an oppressive system. While, as I have argued, Hemans's work is hardly untroubled in its ideological representations, the <em>Madwoman</em> paradigm may not be the most useful for interpreting her because it underestimates the political investments that a female writer in her period might have. Taking Hemans seriously is most interesting when we recognize how much her conventions of femininity challenge our conventions for interpreting them.<br/></div>
</li>
</ol>
<div align="left"><br/>
<strong>Univ. of Minnesota-Twin Cities</strong><br/>
</div>
<h4>Notes</h4>
<p><strong><a name="n1"> </a>1.</strong> <i>Memoir of the Life and Writing of Mrs. Hemans</i> (Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1840), p. 74.<br/></p>
<p><a name="n2"> </a> <strong>2.</strong> George Gordon, Lord Byron, <i>Byron's Letters and Journals</i>, ed. Leslie A. Marchand, 12 vols. (London: John Murray, 1973-82), 7: 182.<br/></p>
<p><a name="n3"> </a> <strong>3.</strong> Scott, letter to Joanna Baillie, July 11, 1823, quoted <i>The Library of Literary Criticism of English and American Authors</i>, ed. Charles Wells Mouton, 8 vols. (Buffalo: Mouton, 1905), 5:257.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n4"> </a>4.</strong> I am influenced here by Marjorie Levinson's "Keats and His Readers: A Question of Taste," <i>Subject to History: Ideology, Class, Gender</i>, ed. David Simpson (Ithaca: Cornell Univ., 1990), pp. 143-62.<br/></p>
<p><a name="n5"> </a> <strong>5.</strong> Montague MS. D. 19., fol. 85. Bodleian Library. Quoted with kind permission of the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n6"> </a>6.</strong> Letter of Oct. 22. 1819: Br. Lib. Add. MS. 33.964. lot. 257. Now printed in <i>Felicia Hemans: Selected Poems</i>, <i>Letters, Reception Materials</i>, ed. Susan J. Wolfson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 482.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n7"> </a>7.</strong> "Observations on the Character, Opinions, and Writing of the Late Lord Byron," <em>Christian Observer</em> 25 (1825): 288.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n8"> </a>8.</strong> Major treatments of Hemans appear in Stuart Curran's "The 'I' Altered," in <i>Romanticism and Feminism</i>, ed. Anne K. Mellor (Bloomington: Indiana Univ., 1988), pp. 185-207; Marlon B. Ross's <em>The Contours of Masculine Desire, Romanticism and the Rise of Women's Poetry</em> (Oxford: Oxford Univ., 1989): Norma Clarke's <em>Ambitious Heights: Writing, Friendship, Love&#8212;The Jewsbury Sisters, Felicia Hemans, and Jane Carlyle</em> (London and New York: Routledge, 1990); Angela Leighton's <em>Victorian Women Poets: Writing Against the Heart</em> (New York: Harvester, 1992), pp. 9-44: and Anne K. Mellor's <em>Romanticism and Gender</em> (New York and London: Routledge, 1993).<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n9"> </a>9.</strong> <em>Britons: Forging the Nation</em>, <i>1707-1837</i> (New Haven: Yale Univ., 1992).<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n10"> </a>10.</strong> "Remarks on Don Juan," <i>Blackwood's</i> 5 (1819): 513.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n11"> </a>11.</strong> For a full treatment of this subject, see E. R. Norman's <em>Anti-Catholicism in Victorian England</em> (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1968).<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n12"> </a>12.</strong> Anne K. Mellor, <i>Romanticism and Gender</i> (New York: Routledge, 1993), p.132.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n13"> </a>13.</strong> One of the poem's first reviewers was particularly bothered by Leonor's fate, noting that it "disappoints us unnecessarily to know, that the Spaniard was unable to lead his beloved wife to the Truth, and that she perished in darkness" (<i>Monthly Magazine</i> 1 [1826]: 584).<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n14"> </a>14.</strong> Editor's note: See Leighton's comments about the ambivalent 'emotional direction' of the poem at the point of Leonore's death in <em>Victorian Women Poets</em>, p. 22.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n15"> </a>15.</strong> Caroline Franklin, <em>Byron's Heroines</em> (Oxford: Oxford Univ., 1992).<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n16"> </a>16.</strong> John Scott, "Living Authors, No IV. Lord Byron." <i>London Magazine</i> 3 (1821): 60-61.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n17"> </a>17.</strong> <em>Monthly Magazine</em> 1 (1826): 581-84. <em>Literary Gazette</em> 1 (1826): 275-76. <em>Monthly Review</em> 2 (1826): 139-46. <em>Literary Magnet</em> 1 (1826). 289-85. <em>Edinburgh Review</em> 50 (1829): 32-47.<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n18"> </a>18.</strong> <em>Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation</em> (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago, 1993).<br/></p>
<p><strong><a name="n19"> </a>19.</strong> Henry F. Chorley, <em>Memorials of Mrs. Hemans...,</em> 2 vols. (New York: Saunders and Otley, 1836), 1:90.<br/></p>
</div></div></div><section class="field field-name-field-parent-section field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Section:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/node/31535">Electronic Editions</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-resource-index field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Resource:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/editions/sceptic/index.html">The Sceptic; A Poem: A Hemans-Byron Dialogue</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-authored-by-secondary- field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Authored by (Secondary):&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/person/elfenbein-andrew">Elfenbein, Andrew</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/percy-bysshe-shelley-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Percy Bysshe Shelley</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/hume" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Hume</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1531" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Peterloo Massacre</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1759" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">skepticism</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/gibbon" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Gibbon</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/2736" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Quarterly Review</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4706" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Sceptic</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4707" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Manfred</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4708" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Childe Harold&#039;s Pilgrimage</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4709" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">woman poet</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/murray" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Murray</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4711" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">sceptic</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4712" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">skeptic</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4713" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">sceptical</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/title/common-sense" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Common Sense</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4715" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Forest Sanctuary</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4716" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Domestic Affections</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4717" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">poetic femininity</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4718" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">bluestocking</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4719" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">heterodoxy</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4720" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">epideictic</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4721" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">didactic</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/jeffrey-walker" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jeffrey Walker</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/bossuet" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Bossuet</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4724" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">1819</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4725" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">life after death</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-52 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Section:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/section/editions/the-sceptic-a-hemans-byron-dialogue" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Sceptic: A Hemans-Byron Dialogue</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-country-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Country:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/country/italy" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Italy</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/country/spain" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Spain</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-organization-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Organization:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/organization/royal-society-of-literature" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Royal Society of Literature</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/organization/north-american-society-for-the-study-of-romanticism-western-ontario" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">North American Society for the Study of Romanticism Western Ontario</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-person-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Person:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/harriett-hughes" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Harriett Hughes</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/john-murray" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">John Murray</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/linda-colley" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Linda Colley</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/felicia-dorothea-hemans" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Felicia Dorothea Hemans</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/caroline-franklin-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Caroline Franklin</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/laura-maria" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Laura Maria</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/walter-scott" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Walter Scott</a></li></ul></section>Thu, 23 Feb 2012 13:14:06 +0000rc-admin17272 at http://www.rc.umd.eduCommentary - "'A darkling plain': Hemans, Byron and _The Sceptic; A Poem_" http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/sceptic/commentary.html
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<b><span class="smalltext">Commentary:<br/></span></b> <span class="smalltext"><br/>
<b>Hemans and Bossuet's Oraisons:</b> Readers of Hemans may be delighted to learn that five of the ten "Oraisons" in Bossuet's collection concern women. Arguably, then, they are among the models for Hemans's often funerary "Records of Woman." Hemans draws her epigraph from the "Oraison Fun&#232;bre d'Anne de Gonzague," also known as the Princesse de Cl&#232;ves, who spent three years in a convent before leaving and entering into a period of libertinism and scepticism. The oration's date, 1685, coincides with the Revocation of the Edit of Nantes. Hemans cites Bossuet elsewhere, for instance in epigraphs to "Stanzas on the Late National Calamity, the Death of the Princess Charlotte" and <em>The Siege of Valencia</em>. <a href="http://www.digital.library.upenn.edu/women/hemans/works/hf-charlotte.html">&#8212; See Hemans's "Stanzas on the Late...Calamity...Princess Charlotte"</a><b><br/>
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Reason and Imagination:</b> The epigraph itself taps into Hemans's own scepticism about "reason" as the enemy of "imagination" or belief, whether in Christianity or, at least as keenly, in legendary accounts she valued. For Hemans and sceptical reason vs. imagination, see Henry Fothergill Chorley, <em>Memorials of Mrs. Hemans with Illustrations of Her Literary Character from Her Private Correspondence</em>, 2 vols. (London: Saunders and Otley, 1836), 2: 171n. The passage refers to the sceptical historian Barthold Georg Niebuhr who contested the existence of Numa and Egeria, tutelary figures for Hemans's Roman/Italian/Mediterranean poetry. Chorley notes that Niebuhr seemed to Hemans "a sceptical inquirer into the traditions of antiquity; and it will be remembered with what small complacency she was prepared to regard any destroyer of the ancient legends in which her imagination took such delight." For more on the Hemans and the Egeria legend with which she was identified in particular, see Maria Jane Jewsbury, "The History of a Nonchalant," <em>The Three Histories</em>; W.M. Rossetti, "Prefatory Notice," <em>The Poetical Works of Mrs. Felicia Hemans</em> (London 1873 etc.; New York, etc.: Moxon, etc., 1873, etc.), pp. 22-23; Nanora Sweet, "Hemans's 'The Widow of Crescentius': Beauty, Sublimity, and the Woman Hero," <em>Approaches to Teaching British Women Poets of the Romantic Period</em>, ed. Stephen C. Behrendt and Harriet Kramer Linkin (New York: MLA, 1997), pp. 104-05. The poet's son Charles Isidore Hemans argues that Niebuhr's scepticism about Numa and Egeria is a form of imagination: <em>Historic and Monumental Rome</em> (London: Williams and Norgate, 1874), pp. 45-47.<br/>
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<b>Reason and Necessity:</b> On Hemans as cutting the Gordion tangle that Bossuet's sceptics make of "reason," see her own pointed syllogisms or enthymemes below on the sceptic and love and the sheer necessity of faith. On Hemans and the "necessity" of faith, see the poem's major review by John Taylor Coleridge (and a discussion of its attribution to him) in the <em>Quarterly Review</em> 24.47 (Oct. 1820): 562 Article 5.<br/>
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Coleridge remarks, "But the argument of ['T]he Sceptic['] is one of irresistible force to confirm a wavering mind; it is simply resting the truth of religion on the necessity of it; on the utter misery and helplessness of man without it."<br/>
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<b><a name="Epigraph" id="Epigraph"> </a>On Hemans and Gibbon:</b> Hemans's favorite sceptic historian, Edward Gibbon, famously credits Bossuet with his own brief and youthful conversion to Catholicism: "the English translations of two famous works of Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux, the <em>Exposition of the Catholic Doctrine, and the History of the Protestant Variations</em>, achieved my conversion, and I surely fell by a noble hand." And as though experiencing his first Roman conquest, he says,"I read, I applauded, I believed." (<em>The Autobiography of Edward Gibbon</em>, ed. Oliphant Smeaton [London: Dent; New York: Dutton, n.d.], p. 52). There's no evidence that Hemans read Gibbon's autobiography, but as I suggest in my essay on Hemans and Rushdie (2001), she was drawn to his "decline and fall" historiography; and as I suggest in this site she was drawn to sceptical debate about Roman history as provoked by Niebuhr.<br/>
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<b><a name="cities" id="cities"> </a>Then ye shall appoint you cities...</b>The slayer here appears to stand in here for the sceptic whose destructiveness and incursions into the "temple state" have worried Hemans in "Heliodorus in the Temple" as well as in the present poem. In the passage, the ecclesiastical system offers the slayer refuge from raw vengeance, though only to deliver him up to formal justice: verse 12 continues, "that the manslayer die not, until he stand before the congregation in judgment." This passage introduces several subversive notes into Hemans's scenarios: Insofar as the sceptic is her audience for this text, he is offered sanctuary but at great judicial risk. Insofar as she is aiming at a more general audience (in the manner of the occasional poem), our lot is that of the fugitive murderer. Further, note that at this point in the poem "the Avenger" she refers to is not the eye-for-eye vigilante of the Numbers text but God Himself, further to her dubious characterization of Him in the poem as Avenger and Chastener.<br/>
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Finally, this text on "refuge" or "sanctuary" forges another&#8212;also subversive&#8212;link to the poem which so often displaces <em>The Sceptic</em> in criticism, <em>The Forest Sanctuary</em>, see the work of Anne Hartman and Andrew Elfenbein.In calling these implications "subversive" of Hemans's declared scenarios, I do not argue that they subvert her poem or poetry. An epideictic work characteristically works back and forth between praise and blame, aiming in the process to recast the human lot and the terms of its dispensation. Once again Hemans approaches the level of "indeterminacy" that Terence Hoagwood attributes to Byron's sceptic method.</span></td>
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<p>&#160;</p></div></div></div><section class="field field-name-field-parent-section field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Section:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/node/31535">Electronic Editions</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-resource-index field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Resource:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/editions/sceptic/index.html">The Sceptic; A Poem: A Hemans-Byron Dialogue</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/percy-bysshe-shelley-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Percy Bysshe Shelley</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/hume" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Hume</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1531" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Peterloo Massacre</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1759" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">skepticism</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/gibbon" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Gibbon</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/2736" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Quarterly Review</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4706" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Sceptic</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4707" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Manfred</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4708" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Childe Harold&#039;s Pilgrimage</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4709" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">woman poet</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/murray" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Murray</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4711" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">sceptic</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4712" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">skeptic</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4713" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">sceptical</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/title/common-sense" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Common Sense</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4715" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Forest Sanctuary</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4716" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Domestic Affections</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4717" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">poetic femininity</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4718" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">bluestocking</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4719" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">heterodoxy</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4720" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">epideictic</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4721" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">didactic</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/jeffrey-walker" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jeffrey Walker</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/bossuet" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Bossuet</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4724" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">1819</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4725" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">life after death</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-52 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Section:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/section/editions/the-sceptic-a-hemans-byron-dialogue" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Sceptic: A Hemans-Byron Dialogue</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-city-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">City:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/city/valencia" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Valencia</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/city/london" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">London</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/city/charlotte" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Charlotte</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-person-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Person:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/edward-gibbon-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Edward Gibbon</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/felicia-dorothea-hemans" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Felicia Dorothea Hemans</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/anne-de-gonzague" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Anne de Gonzague</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/georg-niebuhr" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Georg Niebuhr</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-region-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Region:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/region/mediterranean" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Mediterranean</a></li></ul></section>Thu, 23 Feb 2012 13:13:54 +0000rc-admin17270 at http://www.rc.umd.eduWorks Citedhttp://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/sceptic/bibliography.html
<div class="field field-name-field-published field-type-date field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="collex:date" datatype="gYearMonth"><span class="date-display-single" property="collex:date" datatype="gYearMonth" content="2004-01-01T00:00:00-05:00">January 2004</span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><table width="630" border="0" align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
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<h2>Works Cited</h2>
<span class="smalltext"><a href="#primary">Primary Sources</a></span> <span class="smalltext">| <a href="#secondary">Secondary Sources</a> | <a href="#web">Web Resources</a></span></div>
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<h3>Primary Sources</h3>
<h4>Lord Byron</h4>
<p class="hang">Byron, George Gordon, Lord. <em>Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: A Romaunt.</em> London: Murray, 1812.</p>
<p class="hang"><em>---. Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Canto the Third.</em> London: Murray, 1816.</p>
<p class="hang"><em>---. Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Canto the Fourth.</em> London: Murray, 1818.</p>
<p class="hang"><em>---. Letter to John Murray. 20 July 1820. John Murray Archive, London.</em></p>
<p class="hang"><em>---. Manfred: A Dramatic Poem.</em> London: Murray, 1817.</p>
<p class="hang">Marchand, Leslie A., ed. <em>Byron's Letters and Journals</em>, 13 vols. London: Murray, 1973-82.</p>
<p class="hang">McGann, Jerome J., ed. <em>Byron.</em> Oxford: Oxford UP, 1986.<br/>
<br/></p>
<h4>Felicia Dorothea Hemans</h4>
<p class="hang">Hemans, Felicia Dorothea. Letters to John Murray and William Gifford. 17 Nov. 1819, 4 Dec. 1819, 18 Dec. 1819, 15 Jan. 1820. John Murray Archive, London.</p>
<p class="hang">---. <em>Poems, England and Spain, Modern Greece, The Domestic Affections and Other Poems [and] The Restoration of the Works of Art to Italy [and] Wallace's Invocation to the Bruce [and] The Sceptic.</em> Ed. Donald H. Reiman. Vols. 64-70. <i>The Romantic Context: Poetry.</i> New York &amp; London: Garland, 1976-78.</p>
<p class="hang">[Hughes, Harriet, ed.]. <em>The Poems of Felicia Hemans, A New Edition, Chronologically Arranged, With Illustrative Notes and a Selection of Contemporary Criticism.</em> Edinburgh and London: Blackwood, 1849.</p>
<p class="hang">---. <em>The Works of Mrs Hemans</em>. 7 vols. Edinburgh, Blackwood; London, Cadell, 1839.</p>
<p class="hang">Kelly, Gary, ed. <em>Felicia Hemans: Selected Poems, Prose, and Letters.</em> Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview, 2002.</p>
<p class="hang">Wolfson, Susan J., ed. <em>Felicia Hemans: Selected Poems, Letters, and Reception Materials.</em> Princeton: Princeton UP, 2000.<br/></p>
<h4><br/>
Percy Bysshe Shelley</h4>
<p class="hang">Clark, David Lee, ed. <em>Shelley's Prose; or, The Trumpet of a Prophecy.</em> New York: Fourth Estate, 1988.</p>
<p class="hang">Hutchinson, Thomas and G. M. Matthews eds. <i>The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley</i>. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1970.</p>
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<h3><b>Secondary Sources</b></h3>
<p class="hang">Albergotti, C. Dantzler. "Byron, Hemans, and the Reviewers, 1807-1835." Diss. U of South Carolina, 1995.</p>
<p class="hang">Armstrong, Isobel. <em>Victorian Poetry: Poetry, Poetics, and Politics.</em> London, Routledge, 1993.</p>
<p class="hang">---. "<em>Msrepresentations</em>: Codes of Affect and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Women's Poetry." <em>Women's Poetry, Late Romantic to Late Victorian</em>. Ed. Isobel Armstrong and Virginia Blain. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999. 3-32.</p>
<p class="hang">---. "Natural and National Monuments&#8212;Felicia Hemans's 'The Image in Lava': A Note." Sweet and Melnyk 212-30.</p>
<p class="hang">Armstrong, Isobel, Joseph Bristow, and Cath Sharrock, eds. <em>Nineteenth Century Women Poets</em>. Oxford: Clarendon, 1996.</p>
<p class="hang">Ashfield, Andrew. Introduction. <em>Romantic Women Poets, 1770-1838: An Anthology.</em> Manchester: Manchester UP, 1995. xii-xiii.</p>
<p class="hang">Behrendt, Stephen C. "The Gap That Is Not a Gap: British Poetry by Women, 1802-1812." <em>Romanticism and Women Poets: Opening the Doors of Reception</em>. Ed. Harriet Kramer Linkin and Stephen C. Behrendt. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1999. 25-45.</p>
<p class="hang">---. <i>Royal Mourning and Regency Culture: Elegies and Memorials of Princess Charlotte</i>. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997.</p>
<p class="hang">Bossuet, [Jacques B&#233;nique]. <em>Oraisons Fun&#232;bres</em>. Ed. Jacques Truchet. Paris: Garnier, 1961.</p>
<p class="hang">Butler, Marilyn. "Against Tradition: The Case for a Particularized Historical Method." <em>Historical Studies and Literary Criticism</em>. Ed. Jerome J. McGann. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1985.</p>
<p class="hang">---. <em>Jane Austen and the War of Ideas.</em> Oxford: Clarendon, 1975.</p>
<p class="hang">---. <em>Romantics, Rebels, and Reactionaries: English Literature and Its Background</em>. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1991.</p>
<p class="hang">Chandler, James. <em>England in 1819: The Politics of Literary Culture and the Case of Romantic Historicism.</em> Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1998.</p>
<p class="hang">Chorley, Henry Fothergill. <em>Memorials of Mrs. Hemans with Illustrations of Her Literary Character from Her Private Correspondence</em>. 2 vols. London: Saunders &amp; Otley, 1836.</p>
<p class="hang">Clarke, Norma. <i>Ambitious Heights:</i> <em>Writing, Friendship, Love&#8212;The Jewsbury Sisters, Jane Carlyle, and Felicia Hemans.</em> London: Routledge, 1990.</p>
<p class="hang">Cochran, Peter. "Fatal Fluency, Fruitless Dower: The Eminently Marketable Felicia Hemans." <em>Times Literary Supplement</em> 20 July 1995: 13.</p>
<p class="hang">[Coleridge, John Taylor]. Rev. of Hemans's <em>Restoration of the Works of Art to Italy</em>, etc. <em>Quarterly Review</em> 24.47 (Oct. 1820): 130-39.</p>
<p class="hang">Colley, Linda. <i>Britons:</i> <em>Forging the Nation 1707-1837.</em> London: Pimlico, 1992.</p>
<p class="hang">Droz, Jacques. <em>Europe Between Revolutions 1815-1848</em>. Trans. Robert Baldick. [Glasgow:] Fontana Collins, 1967; sixth impression 1976.</p>
<p class="hang">Edgar, Chad. <em>The Negotiations of the Romantic Popular Poet: A Comparison of the Careers of Felicia Hemans and Lord Byron</em>. Diss. New York U, 1996.</p>
<p class="hang">---. "Felicia Hemans and the Shifting Field of Romanticism." Sweet and Melnyk 124-34.</p>
<p class="hang">Elfenbein, Andrew. "Contesting Heterodoxy: Mrs. Hemans vs. Lord Byron." Inaugural Conference, North American Society for the Study of Romanticism. London, ON. 26 Aug. 1993.</p>
<p class="hang">Feldman, Paula R. "The Poet and the Profits: Felicia Hemans and the Literary Marketplace." <em>Keats-Shelley Journal</em> 46 (1997): 148-76.</p>
<p class="hang">Feldman, Paula R. ed. <em>Records of Woman with Other Poems.</em> Kentucky: UP of Kentucky, 1999.</p>
<p class="hang">Furr, Derek. "Sympathetic Readings: Evaluating English Sentimental Poetry, 1820-1840." Diss. U of Virginia, 1997.</p>
<p class="hang">Gibbon, Edward. <em>The Autobiography of Edward Gibbon</em>. Ed. Oliphant Smeaton. London: Dent; New York: Dutton, n.d.</p>
<p class="hang">---. <em>The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire</em>. Ed. H. H. Milman. 6 vols. New York: Harper, 1862.</p>
<p class="hang">Gilfillan, George. "Mrs. Hemans." <em>Tait's Edinburgh Magazine</em> 14 (June 1847): 359-63.</p>
<p class="hang">Harding, Anthony. "Felicia Hemans and the Effacement of Women." <em>Romantic Women Writers: Voices and Countervoices</em>. Ed. Paula R. Feldman and Theresa M. Kelley. Hanover, NH: UP of New England, 1995. 138-49.</p>
<p class="hang">Hall, Samuel C. <em>A Book of Memories.</em> London: 1876.</p>
<p class="hang">Hartman, Anne. "Debating Confession: The Poetics of Self-Expression, 1815-1850." Diss. U of London, 2000.</p>
<p class="hang">Hemans, Charles Isidore. <em>Historic and Monumental Rome.</em> London: Williams and Norgate, 1874.</p>
<p class="hang">Hill, C. P. <em>British Economic and Social History, 1700-1975</em>. 4th ed. Bath: Arnold, 1977.</p>
<p class="hang">Hoagwood, Terence Allan. <em>Byron's Dialectic: Scepticism and the Critique of Culture.</em> Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell UP, 1993.</p>
<p class="hang">Hobsbawn, Eric. <em>The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789-1848.</em> 1962. London: Sphere, 1973.</p>
<p class="hang">Jack, Ian. <em>English Literature</em>, <i>1815-1832</i>. Oxford: Clarendon, 1963.</p>
<p class="hang">Jewsbury, Maria Jane. <em>The Three Histories</em>. London: Westley, 1830.</p>
<p class="hang">Kaplan, Cora. <em>Salt and Bitter and Good.</em> London: Paddington, 1975.</p>
<p class="hang">Kelly, Gary. Introduction. <em>Felicia Hemans: Selected Poems, Prose, and Letters</em>. Ed. Gary Kelly. Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 2002. 15-85.</p>
<p class="hang">Larrabee, Stephen. <em>English Bards and Grecian Marbles</em>. New York: Columbia UP, 1943.</p>
<p class="hang">Leighton, Angela. <em>Victorian Women Poets: Writing Against the Heart.</em> Charlottesville: UP of Virginia; London: Harvester, 1992.</p>
<p class="hang">---. <em>Victorian Women Poets: A Critical Reader.</em> Oxford: Blackwell, 1996.</p>
<p class="hang">Lootens, Tricia. "Hemans and Home: Victorianism, Feminine 'Internal Enemies,' and the Domestication of National Identity." <em>PMLA</em> 109 (March 1994): 238-53; Rpt. in Angela Leighton, <em>Victorian Women Poets: A Critical Reader</em>. 1-23.</p>
<p class="hang">Lucas, John. <em>England and Englishness</em>. London: Hogarth, 1991.</p>
<p class="hang">Mantel, Hilary. <em>The Giant, O'Brien: A Novel.</em> London: Fourth Estate, 1998.</p>
<p class="hang">McCord, Norman. <em>British History</em>, <i>1815-1906</i>. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1991.</p>
<p class="hang">McGann, Jerome J. <em>The Poetics of Sensibility: A Revolution in Literary Style.</em> Oxford: Clarendon, 1996.</p>
<p class="hang">Mellor, Anne. <em>Romanticism and Gender.</em> New York: Routledge, 1993.</p>
<p class="hang">---. <em>Mothers of the Nation: Women's Political Writing in England, 1780-1830.</em> Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2000.</p>
<p class="hang">Melnyk, Julie. "Hemans's Later Poetry: Religion and the Vatic Poet." Sweet and Melnyk 74-92.</p>
<p class="hang">Moore, Doris Langley. <i>Lord Byron[;] <em>Accounts</em></i> <em>Rendered.</em> London: Murray, 1974.</p>
<p class="hang">Nicholson, Francis. "Correspondence Between Mrs Hemans and Matthew Nicholson, an early member of this Society." <em>Manchester Memories</em> 54.9 (1910): 1-19.</p>
<p class="hang">Peel, Ellen, and Nanora Sweet. "<em>Corinne</em> and the Woman as Poet in England: Hemans, Jewsbury, and Barrett Browning." <em>The Novel's Seductions: Sta&#235;l's</em> Corinne <em>in Critical Inquiry.</em> Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 1999. 204-220.</p>
<p class="hang">Perelman, Ch[aim], and L. Olbrechsts-Tyteca. <em>The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation.</em> 1958. Trans. John Wilkinson and Purcell Weaver. Notre Dame, U of Notre Dame P: 1969.</p>
<p class="hang">Reiman, Donald H. <i>Intervals of Inspiration: <em>The</em></i> <em>Skeptical Tradition and the Psychology of Romanticism</em>. Greenwood, FL: Penkevill, 1988.</p>
<p class="hang">Renais, Alain, dir. <i>La Guerre Est Finie</i>. Perf. Yves Montand. Production Sofracimas-Paris, 1965.</p>
<p class="hang">Rev. of [John] Abernethy. "<em>An Enquiry into the Probability and Rationality of Mr Hunter's Theory of Life, being the Subject of two Anatomical Lectures delivered before the Royal College of Surgeons of London</em> by John Abernethy and <i>Remarks on Scepticism being an answer to the views of Bichat, Sir T. C. Morgan and Mr Lawrence</i> by the Rev Thomas Rennell A.M. Christian Advocate at the University of Cambridge. <em>Quarterly Review</em> 22:43 (July 1819): 1-34.</p>
<p class="hang">Ross, Marlon B. <em>The Contours of Masculine Desire: Romanticism and the Rise of Women's Poetry</em>. New York: Oxford UP, 1989.</p>
<p class="hang">Rossetti, W. M. "Prefatory Notice." <em>The Poetical Works of Mrs. Hemans.</em> London: Moxon, 1873, etc.</p>
<p class="hang">Ryan, Robert M. <em>The Romantic Reformation: Religious Politics in English Literature, 1789-1824.</em> Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.</p>
<p class="hang">St. Clair, William. <em>The Impact of Byron's Writings: An Evaluative Approach.</em> New York: St. Martin's, 1990.</p>
<p class="hang">---. <em>Lord Elgin and the Marbles.</em> London: Oxford UP, 1967.</p>
<p class="hang">---. <em>The Impact of Byron's Writings: An Evaluative Approach.</em> New York: St Martin's, 1990.</p>
<p class="hang">Shine, Hill, and Helen Chadwick Shine. <em>The Quarterly Review Under Gifford: Identification of Contributors</em>, <i>1809-1824</i>. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1949.</p>
<p class="hang">Sweet, Nanora Louise Ziebold. "The Bowl of Liberty: Felicia Hemans and the Romantic Mediterranean." Diss. U of Michigan, 1993.</p>
<p class="hang">---. "Gender and Modernity in <em>The Abencerrage</em>: Hemans, Rushdie, and 'the Moor's Last Sigh.'" Sweet and Melnyk 181-95.</p>
<p class="hang">---. "Hemans's 'The Widow of Crescentius': Beauty, Sublimity, and the Woman Hero." <em>Approaches to Teaching British Women Poets of the Romantic Period</em>. Ed. Stephen C. Behrendt and Harriet Kramer Linkin. New York: MLA, 1997. 104-05.</p>
<p class="hang">---. "History, Imperialism and the Aesthetics of the Beautiful: Hemans and the Post-Napoleonic Moment." <em>At the Limits of Romanticism: Essays in Cultural, Feminist, and Materialist Criticism</em>. Ed. Mary A. Favret and Nicola Watson. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1994. 170-84.</p>
<p class="hang">---. "'Lorenzo's' Liverpool and 'Corinne's' Coppet: The Italianate Salon and Romantic Education." <em>The Lessons of Romanticism</em>. Ed. Thomas Pfau and Robert F. Gleckner. Durham: Duke UP, 1998. 244-60.</p>
<p class="hang">---. "Skepticism and Its Cost: Hemans's Reading of Byron." Byron Society. Modern Language Association Annual Convention. San Diego, 28 December 1994.</p>
<p class="hang">--- and Julie Melnyk, eds. <em>Felicia Hemans: Reimagining Poetry in the Nineteenth Century.</em> Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001.</p>
<p class="hang">Taylor, Barbara D. "The Search for a Space: A Note on Felicia Hemans and the Royal Society of Literature." Sweet and Melnyk 115-23.</p>
<p class="hang">Taylor, Barbara D. "Felicia Hemans: The Making of a Professional Poet." Diss. U of Loughborough,1998.</p>
<p class="hang">Trinder, Peter W. <em>Mrs Hemans</em>. Cardiff: U of Wales P, 1984.</p>
<p class="hang">Walker, Jeffrey. "Aristotle's Lyric: Re-Imagining the Rhetoric of Epideictic Song." <em>College English</em> 51 (Jan. 1989): 5-28.</p>
<p class="hang">---. "The Body of Persuasion: A Theory of the Enthymeme." <em>College English</em> 56 (Jan. 1994): 46-65.</p>
<p class="hang">Williamson, Michael T. "Impure Affections: Felicia Hemans's Elegiac Poetry and Contaminated Grief." Sweet and Melnyk 19-35.</p>
<p class="hang">Wilson, Carol Shiner, and Joel Haefner, eds. <em>Revisioning Romanticism: British Women Writers</em>, 1776-1837. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1994.</p>
<p class="hang">Wolfson, Susan. "Felicia Hemans and the Revolving Doors of Reception." <em>Romanticism and Women Poets: Opening the Doors of Reception.</em> Ed. Harriet Kramer Linkin and Stephen C. Behrendt. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1999. 214-41.</p>
<p class="hang">---. <em>Formal Charges: The Shaping of Poetry in British Romanticism.</em> Stanford UP, 1997.</p>
<p class="hang">---. "Hemans and the Romance of Byron." Sweet and Melnyk 155-80.</p>
<p class="hang">---. "'Domestic Affections' and 'the spear of Minerva': Felicia Hemans and the Dilemma of Gender." Wilson and Haefner 126-66.</p>
<p class="hang">Wu, Duncan. <em>Romantic Women Poets: An Anthology.</em> Oxford: Blackwell, 1997.<br/></p>
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<h3><a name="web"> </a>Web Resources</h3>
<p class="hang">Arnold, Matthew, "Dover Beach." 27 Dec. 2003.<br/>
<a href="http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem89.html">eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem89.html</a></p>
<p class="hang">Byron, George Gordon, <em>Manfred.</em> 28 Dec. 2003.<br/>
<a href="http://www.litgothic.com/Texts/manfred.html">www.litgothic.com/Texts/manfred.html</a></p>
<p class="hang">---. "The Prison of Chillon." 27 Dec. 2003.<br/>
<a href="http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem363.html">eir.library.toronto.ca/rpo/display/poem363.html</a></p>
<p class="hang">---. "Prometheus." 14 Dec. 2003.<br/>
<a href="http://www.englishhistory.net/byron/poems/prometheus.html">www.englishhistory.net/byron/poems/prometheus.html</a></p>
<p class="hang">Cutmore, Jonathan. <i>The Quarterly Review, 1809-1824: Notes, Contents, and Identification of Contributors.</i> Romantic Circles.<br/>
www.rc.umd.edu/reference/QR/<br/></p>
<p class="hang">Cochran, Peter, ed. <i>The Sceptic</i> by Felicia Hemans. <i>Hobby-O</i>. 28 Dec. 2003.<br/>
<a href="http://www.hobby-o.com/hemans.php">www.hobby-o.com/hemans.php<br/></a><br/>
Kushigian, Nancy, and Charlotte Payne, eds. Felicia Dorothea Browne Hemans. <i>The Sceptic; A Poem.</i> 1998. <i>British Women Romantic Poets, 1789-1832.</i> Shields Library. U of California, Davis. 14 Dec. 2003.<br/>
<a href="http://www.lib.ucdavis.edu/English/BWRP/Works/HemaFScept.htm">www.lib.ucdavis.edu/English/BWRP/Works/HemaFScept.htm</a></p>
<p class="hang">Polwhele, Richard. <em>The Unsex'd Females: A Poem.</em> Electronic Text Center. U of Virginia. 17 Feb. 2004.<br/>
<a href="http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/britpo/unsex/unsex.html">etext.lib.virginia.edu/britpo/unsex/unsex.html</a></p>
<p class="hang">Sweet, Nanora. "Hemans, Heber, and <em>Superstition and Revelation</em>: Experiment and Orthodoxy at the Scene of Writing." <em>Romantic Passions</em>, ed. Elizabeth Fay, series <em>Romantic Praxis</em>, website <em>Romantic Circles</em>; March 1998. 27 Dec. 2003.<br/>
<a href="http://www.rc.umd.edu/praxis/passions/sweet/sweet.html">www.rc.umd.edu/praxis/passions/sweet/sweet.html</a></p>
<p class="hang">---. "Bibliography of Felicia Hemans." 2001. 14 Dec. 2003.<br/>
<a href="http://www.umsl.edu/%7Esweet/swetbib.htm">www.umsl.edu/~sweet/swetbib.htm</a></p>
<p class="hang">---. "Chronology of Felicia Hemans and her Milieu." 1996. 14 Dec. 2003.<a href="http://www.umsl.edu/%7Esweet/swethman.htm"><br/>
www.umsl.edu/~sweet/swethman.htm</a></p>
<p class="hang">Wolfson, Susan J. "Editing Felicia Hemans for the Twenty-First Century." <i>Romanticism On the Net</i> 19 (August 2000). 27 Dec. 2003.<br/>
<a href="http://users.ox.ac.uk/~scat0385/19hemans.html">users.ox.ac.uk/~scat0385/19hemans.html</a></p>
<p class="hang">Wordsworth, William. <i>The Excursion</i>, Book Second. Bartleby.com. Great Books Online. 14 Dec. 2003.<br/>
<a href="http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww399.html">http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww399.html</a></p>
<p class="hang">---. <em>The Prelude</em>, Book First. Bartleby.com. Great Books Online. 14 Dec. 2003.<br/>
<a href="http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww287.html">www.bartleby.com/145/ww287.html</a><br/>
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</div></div></div><section class="field field-name-field-parent-section field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Section:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/node/31535">Electronic Editions</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-resource-index field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Resource:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/editions/sceptic/index.html">The Sceptic; A Poem: A Hemans-Byron Dialogue</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/percy-bysshe-shelley-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Percy Bysshe Shelley</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/hume" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Hume</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1531" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Peterloo Massacre</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1759" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">skepticism</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/gibbon" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Gibbon</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/2736" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Quarterly Review</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4706" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Sceptic</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4707" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Manfred</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4708" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Childe Harold&#039;s Pilgrimage</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4709" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">woman poet</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/murray" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Murray</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4711" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">sceptic</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4712" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">skeptic</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4713" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">sceptical</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/title/common-sense" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Common Sense</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4715" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Forest Sanctuary</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4716" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Domestic Affections</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4717" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">poetic femininity</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4718" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">bluestocking</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4719" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">heterodoxy</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4720" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">epideictic</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4721" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">didactic</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/jeffrey-walker" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jeffrey Walker</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/bossuet" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Bossuet</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4724" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">1819</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4725" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">life after death</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-52 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Section:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/section/editions/the-sceptic-a-hemans-byron-dialogue" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Sceptic: A Hemans-Byron Dialogue</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-city-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">City:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/city/paris" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Paris</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/city/oxford" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Oxford</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/city/manchester" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Manchester</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/city/london" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">London</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/city/chicago" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Chicago</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/city/edinburgh" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Edinburgh</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-continent-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Continent:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/continent/europe" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Europe</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-country-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Country:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/country/italy" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Italy</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/country/chad" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Chad</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/country/spain" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Spain</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/country/greece" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Greece</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-organization-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Organization:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/organization/manchester-up" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Manchester UP</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/organization/north-american-society-for-the-study-of-romanticism" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">North American Society for the Study of Romanticism</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/organization/up-of-kentucky" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">UP of Kentucky</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-person-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Person:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/donald-h-reiman-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Donald H. Reiman</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/william-gifford" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">William Gifford</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/isobel-armstrong" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Isobel Armstrong</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/percy-bysshe-shelley-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Percy Bysshe Shelley</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/gary-kelly" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Gary Kelly</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/julie-melnyk" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Julie Melnyk</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/stephen-c-behrendt" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Stephen C. Behrendt</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/john-taylor" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">John Taylor</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/charlotte-payne" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Charlotte Payne</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/felicia-dorothea-hemans" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Felicia Dorothea Hemans</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/john-murray" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">John Murray</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/harriet-kramer-linkin-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Harriet Kramer Linkin</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/virginia-blain" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Virginia Blain</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-provinceorstate-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">ProvinceOrState:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/province-or-state/kentucky" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Kentucky</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/province-or-state/wisconsin" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Wisconsin</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/province-or-state/indiana" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Indiana</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/province-or-state/peterborough" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Peterborough</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/province-or-state/south-carolina" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">South Carolina</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/province-or-state/ontario" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Ontario</a></li></ul></section>Thu, 23 Feb 2012 13:13:16 +0000rc-admin17268 at http://www.rc.umd.eduAbout This Hypertexthttp://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/sceptic/about.html
<div class="field field-name-field-published field-type-date field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="collex:date" datatype="gYearMonth"><span class="date-display-single" property="collex:date" datatype="gYearMonth" content="2004-01-01T00:00:00-05:00">January 2004</span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><div align="center">
<h2>About This Hypertext</h2>
<span class="smmenu"><a href="#editors">editors</a> | <a href="#contributors">contributors</a> | <a href="#acknowledgements">acknowledgements</a> | <a href="#text">text</a> | <a href="#images">images</a> | <a href="#design">design</a></span></div>
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<h3><b><a name="editors"> </a></b>The Editors</h3>
<p><i>Nanora Sweet</i> is a member of the English Department and Institute for Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. She has published essays concerning Hemans in <i>At the Limits of Romanticism</i>, <i>The Lessons of Romanticism</i>, <i>Approaches to Teaching British Women Poets of the Romantic Period</i>, <i>The Novel's Seductions: Sta&#235;l's Corinne in Critical Inquiry</i>, and the <i>European Romantic Review</i> and contributed entries on Hemans to new editions of the <i>Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature</i> and the <i>Dictionary of National Biography</i>. She has co-edited the essay collection <i>Felicia Hemans: Reimagining Poetry in the Nineteenth Century</i> for Palgrave in 2001.</p>
<p><i>Barbara Taylor</i> completed her doctoral research project, <i>Felicia Hemans: The Making of a Professional Poet</i>, in 1998. Her essay on Felicia Hemans and the Royal Society of Literature, "The Search for a Space," appears in <i>Felicia Hemans: Re-Imagining Poetry in the Nineteenth Century</i> (2001).</p>
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<h3><b><a name="contributors"> </a></b> The Contributors</h3>
<p><i>Andrew Elfenbein</i> is Professor of English at University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. He is the author of <i>Byron and the Victorians</i> (1995) and <i>Romantic Genius: The Prehistory of a Homosexual Role</i> (1999) and is currently working on a project about queer family structures.</p>
<p><i>Anne Hartman</i> has recently completed doctoral research on discourses of confession in the early nineteenth century at Birkbeck College, University of London. She has co-edited a scholarly edition of Dinah Craik, and is working on a bibliography of nineteenth-century women poets for <i>Annotated Bibliography for English Studies</i>.</p>
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<b><a name="acknowledgements"> </a></b>
<h3>Acknowledgements</h3>
<p>This edition is the result of a cross Atlantic collaboration originally instigated by Adriana Craciun as part of the work of the University of Nottingham Centre for Byron Studies and we would like to thank her for her help and support. We would also like to thank Sanjiv Patel of the University of Nottingham's Learning Group for all his work and patience in designing the original site (and Ben Pekkanen and Kate Singer for transforming it for Romantic Circles). We have benefited from technical help from both sides of the Atlantic; in Nottingham from John Walsh and Rosa Talbut in the Study Support Centre and from the University of Missouri-St. Louis both Jennifer Spearman-Simms and Teri Vogler in the Faculty Resource Center. We also thank Virginia Murray for permission to include the letters of Felicia Hemans and Lord Byron. These letters are property of the Murray Archive, London.</p>
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<b><a name="text"> </a></b>
<h3>The Text</h3>
<p>This edition presents and excavates the text and context of Felicia Hemans's 1820 pamphlet-poem <i>The Sceptic</i>. Neglected by the poet's current editors, <i>The Sceptic</i> places Hemans in direct contention with Byron over belief in an afterlife in a time of uncertainty for both poets. The edition includes letters, reviews, poems, and images. A set of critical essays by Anne Hartman and Andrew Elfenbein and editors Barbara Taylor and Nanora Sweet probe Hemans's work for its engagement with Byron, allusions to topics of the day (from Peterloo to scientific debate in the <i>Quarterly Review</i>), exploitation of a poetry of praise and blame shared with Byron, and negotiation of gender through poetic style and philosophical argument.</p>
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<h3><b><a name="images"> </a></b> <b>The Images</b></h3>
<p>The portrait of Felicia Hemans was painted by William Edward West in 1827 and is used with permission of the May Somerville family. This edition also presents a <a href="/editions/sceptic/gallery.html">Gallery</a> of paintings from Nottingham City Museums, engravings of Hemans and Byron as well as original photographs of Newstead Abbey and memorials to both Hemans and Bryon taken by editor Nanora Sweet.</p>
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<b><a name="design"> </a></b>
<h3><b>The Design</b></h3>
<p>This hypertext edition was designed and marked up at the University of Maryland by Ben Pekkanen and <a href="mailto:ksinger@wam.umd.edu">Kate Singer</a>, Site Managers at Romantic Circles. Making extensive use of tables and style sheets for layout and presentation, it will work best when viewed with Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator versions 5.0 and 4.7, respectively, and higher. The HTML markup is HTML 4.01/Transitional compliant, as set out by the <a href="http://www.w3c.org/">World Wide Web Consortium</a>.</p>
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</div></div></div><section class="field field-name-field-parent-section field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Section:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/node/31535">Electronic Editions</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-resource-index field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Resource:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/editions/sceptic/index.html">The Sceptic; A Poem: A Hemans-Byron Dialogue</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/percy-bysshe-shelley-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Percy Bysshe Shelley</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/hume" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Hume</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1531" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Peterloo Massacre</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1759" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">skepticism</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/gibbon" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Gibbon</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/2736" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Quarterly Review</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4706" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Sceptic</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4707" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Manfred</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4708" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Childe Harold&#039;s Pilgrimage</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4709" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">woman poet</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/murray" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Murray</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4711" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">sceptic</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4712" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">skeptic</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4713" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">sceptical</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/title/common-sense" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Common Sense</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4715" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Forest Sanctuary</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4716" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Domestic Affections</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4717" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">poetic femininity</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4718" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">bluestocking</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4719" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">heterodoxy</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4720" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">epideictic</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4721" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">didactic</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/jeffrey-walker" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jeffrey Walker</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/bossuet" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Bossuet</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4724" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">1819</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4725" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">life after death</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-52 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Section:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/section/editions/the-sceptic-a-hemans-byron-dialogue" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Sceptic: A Hemans-Byron Dialogue</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-organization-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Organization:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/organization/royal-society-of-literature" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Royal Society of Literature</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/organization/university-of-missouri-st-louis" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">University of Missouri-St. Louis</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/organization/institute-for-women" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Institute for Women</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/organization/english-department" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">English Department</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/organization/university-of-minnesota" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">University of Minnesota</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/organization/university-of-london" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">University of London</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-person-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Person:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/felicia-dorothea-hemans" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Felicia Dorothea Hemans</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/anne-hartman" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Anne Hartman</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/nanora-sweet" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Nanora Sweet</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/andrew-elfenbein" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Andrew Elfenbein</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/barbara-taylor" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Barbara Taylor</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-provinceorstate-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">ProvinceOrState:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/province-or-state/missouri" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Missouri</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/province-or-state/minnesota" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Minnesota</a></li></ul></section>Thu, 23 Feb 2012 13:13:06 +0000rc-admin17267 at http://www.rc.umd.edu